


What The World Needs Now Is Love: Part Three - An Aaron Hotchner Story

by Abixx7



Series: What The World Needs Now Is Love [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Action & Romance, Angst, Crime Fighting, Domestic Fluff, Drama & Romance, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kidnapping, LGBTQ Character, POV First Person, Past Relationship(s), Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-08-17 12:56:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 40
Words: 76,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16516898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abixx7/pseuds/Abixx7
Summary: The last few weeks have prompted a new wave of firsts in the Harmon household: the first time Lizzy has lived with a man since her engagement ended, the first time she has allowed herself more than a kiss with Aaron and the first time she has valued her own desires on par to those around her. However, with a new first spiraling into her life that she didn't expect - the first time she has heard Clint's name since he walked out of their lives - will this change completely dismantle the life Lizzy has built for herself? Will she be able to calm the demons that rage inside her own mind? And will Lizzy and Aaron's relationship be able to withstand the barriers that stand in their path?*PART THREE IN THE WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE SERIES*





	1. Praefatio

Welcome back to Part 3 of What The World Needs Now Is Love!  
\- If you haven't read the first part and the second part, then that's basically a given at this stage in the game; find them here and here  
\- I'll be updating this story twice a week on Sunday at 10:30 am GMT and Wednesday at 6pm GMT  
\- Roughly, this story takes place at the beginning of Series 6 - basically it is post-Hayley's death  
\- In this world, Beth never came into the picture  
\- This story will contain swearing  
\- I don't own Criminal Minds, nor do I own Hotch, Reid, Rossi, Morgan, Prentiss, JJ, Garcia, Sean, Jessica or Jack, Hotch's son. The rest of the characters, however, are my own.  
\- There are some darker/more mature themes in this one but I'll give you a heads-up before anything happens  
\- Again, the chapter titles are in Latin because Lizzy is a bit of a Latin aficionado  
\- You can check out the Spotify playlist that I created for this story which features songs which describe Lizzy, songs that she likes, songs that feature in this part, songs that are inspiration for sequels and songs that fit with certain moods and atmospheres within the story (https://open.spotify.com/user/abicxx/playlist/77vKl2TAgLlocN1XWX6Cs4?si=kZHENBHsSa2dRRoE0jH2DQ)  
\- Enjoy!


	2. Unum

A take on the ridiculously cute, ridiculously overdone trope of a romantic breakfast/moment/first-time being ruined by the impromptu arrival of one's work colleagues to ease you in gently. And, just a warning, this gets rather heated and Lizzy has some very specific urges.

I padded down the stairs, the wood gently creaking beneath my feet as faint swathes of light shone through the curtains that I had hastily pulled closed last night, other topics clearly having been on my mind. My legs felt shaky and my whole body languid, the silk dressing gown that I had yanked from the back of my door sliding over my skin that still felt flushed. I stepped into the living room with the pile of cards and presents balancing on the coffee table beckoning me over, because I really was a child, but the gnawing in my stomach redirected my path. It had to be pancakes first.

Birthday pancakes.

Happy birthday to me.

I reached for the ingredients from the counter, purposefully bought last night on my way home from my dance lesson at the 24 hour mart, and then instantly tensed as a pair of arms wrapped themselves around my waist. I hadn't heard him come down the stairs. I rolled my eyes. FBI tactics again.

I settled back into the warmth of his chest, tearing open the fresh bag of flour and letting the flecks of white coat my fingers. He was constantly warm, I had learned, and I was constantly drinking in his heat, even more so when he refrained from picking the white shirt off the floor and replacing it on his body - the one that he had carefully let slide to the floor once I had unbuttoned it and we had had the discussion about the marks puckering along his stomach again. It made my heart twinge every time we had to; they weren't indifferent to the scar I had running horizontally down my torso, a faded scar, but a scar nevertheless.

I craned my neck to look at him, his hair still tousled from where I had ran my fingers through it and saw his tender smile. I wanted to lock him inside my bedroom so that he could never leave - so that I could experience that smile and his hair and his touch whenever I wanted to.

"I was going to make you breakfast in bed." He murmured into the top of my head as I turned round to reach for the chocolate chips. I could hear the pout in his tone as he gently squeezed my sides, the sound of his voice reverberating down my spine and making me smile.

"Tough. You should have got on with your romantic gesture sooner. I'm hungry."

"Really?" His voice turned teasing as one of his hands slipped up to the tender spot below my breasts. "What have you done to work up such an appetite?" I rolled my eyes, resisting the urge to sigh at the feeling of his warm, calloused hands against my skin, even over a thin dressing gown.

"Are you actually a teenager?" He let out a chuckle and pressed a kiss into my hair. "I'm trying to make breakfast." I whined, bending slightly to try and reach for a pan but being stopped by his body pressed against mine. "Can you let go of me for a second?"

"No, you're too beautiful." He said stoically, before kissing my cheek. I felt myself blush as his grip around my waist loosened and I reached for the pan. 

"I could get used to this." I grinned, turning back to face him and pressing my hands over the top of his that had returned to my waist.

"So could I. You're dangerous now - " He leaned forwards to kiss me deeply, pressing me slightly into the counter as his stubble scratched across my chin. The longer his hands were touching my body and my lips were on his, the more urgently I wanted to take his hand and drag him back upstairs.

I broke apart slowly, resting my nose against his. I wanted to continue so badly. But I really was starving.

"I'm really hungry." I said softly, biting my lip and watching him roll his eyes slightly.

"That's why I was going to make you breakfast in bed."

"I didn't know that - "

"Because it was meant to be a surprise!"

"You should have hurried up then."

"I was in the arms of a beautiful woman. I wasn't moving - "

"You're so cheesy." I said lowly, as though the compliment was an insult rather than something that made my entire body flush, especially when coming from a half-dressed Aaron. 

"You love cheesy." I carefully opened the baking power and the sugar, my hands feeling more warm-blooded than I had perhaps ever felt them. 

"Cheesy films." I corrected stubbornly, knowing that he was no doubt giving me an incredulous expression. We both knew that I was something of a sap when it came to things of the romantic or cheesy variety, even if my tastes were tooth-rotteningly sweet according to Kelly. I didn't care.

"Whatever..."

"If you're going to stand around, then you can at least help." I said, as though I wasn't enjoying the way his body was pressed so close to mine, his soft sweats rubbing against the backs of my legs. "You can get a plate." I knew the ratios of the ingredients of by heart now, seeing these were the pancakes that I made for every special occasion. 

I poured the ingredients into the pan, instantly missing the feel of Aaron's hands on my body as he reached up into the cupboard.

"Just one plate?" I shrugged.

"You deserve to make your own after keeping me from mine." He took two plates down and I sighed, as though frustrated. "Are you forgetting whose birthday it is?"

"I guess I'll have to spend the rest of the day making it up to you." My lips melted into a smirk as I met his gaze, something that was unavoidable when he was wearing that same intense, deeply serious expression with the twinkle in his eye that told me he wasn't just joking but currently reliving every second of last night in his mind, every shuddered breath and moan and whisper...

"I like the sound of that." I said thickly, attempting to focus on the batter in the pan rather than his presence behind me or the memory of the way he had made me feel beneath him. I tried not to gasp when his lips met my neck, one hand sweeping my hair to the side as the cool air deliciously caressing my skin along with the slow, purposeful movement of his lips. He knew how sensitive my neck was...

"What time do we have to pick the kids up?" I forced myself to keep my teeth pressed into my tongue to repress my groan as his voice ricocheted off the sensitive skin of my neck. 

"I think the idea was to go to the restaurant with my parents." I said slowly, focusing on the bubble of the batter rather than his breath. 

"So, lunch time?"

"Yeah." I could feel his smirk against my neck.

"That gives us a couple of hours just to ourselves." I was going to snap in a moment. I was going to snap, hard, and I was suddenly glad that I had decided to clean the kitchen yesterday. I had a feeling that I was going to have to clean it again, however.

I spun in his grip, his mouth awaiting mine as the moan that had been building up inside of me was ripped from my throat. His hands were slowly caressing my whole torso, his tongue slipping into my mouth as I gripped onto his hair, our breathing becoming heavier with every kiss that I pressed into his skin. His touch was becoming harder to ignore as his hands grew tighter, begging to break through the scrap of clothing that was covering me. 

I could feel him through his sweats, a pair he wore to the gym on the rare chance he could steal time away. I had told him that they wouldn't last many more washes. I didn't know whether they would be able to last me tearing them from his body.

Fuck. I needed more. I needed him inside of me, his voice rough in my ear and against my skin and his stubble scratching between my thighs...

"The pancakes are going to burn - " I groaned, only a scrap of my sanity even caring about my literal hunger. I had another kind of hunger that I needed to be sated now. Right now. This moment. I couldn't breathe -

I jolted back at the sound of a knock on the door, meeting Aaron's gaze and taking in his heaving chest and flushed torso. "I'll get it." He admitted with a smirk and I turned back towards the pan, taking a spatula in hand to flip the pancakes and thankful that they hadn't actually been burned. I closed my eyes for a moment, glad of a moment to regain my breath and mentally prepare for everything that was coming and - 

What the hell? I knew those voices, the voices that were now barrelling through the door complaining about their boss' naked chest and his lack of response to their calls.

It was the team. As in, the BAU team. In my living room. Right at the moment that I wanted nothing more than to seize Aaron by the neck and...do things...

"What are you guys doing here?" I half-shouted, taking in Aaron's equally shocked and slightly disappointed expression. I folded my arms, pulling my dressing gown tighter against myself from where Aaron had been pulling at the neck. 

"Some people aren't answering their cells." Derek said in an accusatory manner, waving his own cell in his hand. My eyes widened slightly as I realized that our cells would, most probably, be stuffed down the sides of the couch from where we had been sitting last night before things had turned exciting. 

"We left them downstairs." I admitted with an apologetic shrug, doing my best to avoid the gazes of any member of the team. I didn't like the way they seemed to be honing in on Aaron and I's relative states of undress. I could be wearing something underneath my dressing gown; they didn't know.

Or did they? They were profilers, after all...

I ran a hurried hand through my hair, sure that I must be sticking up like a bird's nest given the amount of times Aaron had been running his hands through it and how I'd been covered in sweat - 

I probably had marks on my neck, didn't I? Once Aaron had found out that my neck was particularly sensitive and a sure way to make me moan, his lips had barely left the skin. I self-consciously flipped my hair over one shoulder, covering the side which Aaron had been most occupied with, in the hope that no one had noticed. Who was I kidding? I probably looked like a walking embodiment of sex hair. For God's sake...

Everyone was looking far too smug and pleased with themselves - if slightly embarrassed - for my liking. Why did people knowing that I had had sex affect me so much? They might not even know! I was being childish and ridiculous and being completely hypocritical towards the entire ethos on which I worked on about riding the taboo surrounding sex and - 

Fuck. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

"Can we put some clothes on, please? I'm sure there are regulations about seeing your boss half-dressed."

"If you'd called, we wouldn't - " Aaron seemed to have resumed his blunt, authoritative tone that he lived in at work and while it might seem he was being grumpy and tiresome, he had seemed happy enough a moment ago and I had more than one way of proving that.

"We did call." Emily interrupted as Aaron disappeared up the stairs, taking them two at a time which left me far to open and vulnerable to the stares of the team. I had known them all for months now and knew that they were all lovely, kind people.

And yet the fact that they were seeing me in such a state was making me feel sick to my stomach.

Aaron returned a moment later, the white shirt he had removed last night now covering his torso. Even the sight of the shirt made me want to blush and I had to focus on the browning of the pancakes to stop myself.

"So. What's this about?"

"Strauss is calling us in." JJ said with a shrug, her blank expression showing that she wasn't exactly happy about it either. 

"What? It's the weekend?" The fact that we had been able to schedule so much time to ourselves was that, thankfully, my birthday had fallen on a Saturday this year. I carefully started peeling the pancakes from the pan and transferring them to the cooling rack. It seemed that our plans to have the rest of the morning to ourselves was now being littered with bullet-holes.

I didn't want to admit that I had been looking forward to spending the day with him since Christmas, since I had spotted that my birthday had fallen on a weekend. Neither of us had any prior commitments, unless a situation of national security decided to rear its head. 

"She wants a meeting with the entire department. No exceptions." JJ said with another shrug, Aaron's face turning even more defiant. 

"It's okay." I said with a smile, tilting my head slightly. "You have to go."

"No I don't. Your parents will kill me - " I couldn't help rolling my eyes. This was what he was most worried about? Missing our lunch reservation?

"How long do you think you'll be?" I said, turning my gaze over to the team for a second. 

"Couple of hours, probably..." JJ said and I nodded.

"That way, you'll be able to make it to the restaurant on time." We would miss out on our morning together spent back in my bed but I would have to get over that. It couldn't be helped.

He met my gaze, his thoughts also clearly on the time that wouldn't be able to share together. I shrugged.

"I've already told you that being with me shouldn't affect your work." This had been one of the more serious conversations that we had had, conversations that I was insisting happened more often because we were both so terrible at sharing our feelings. I saw him visibly sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose.

"Fine. I won't be a minute." He said to his time, throwing another regretful look in my direction before disappearing up the stairs again. I was sure that situations like this would be only too common in our relationship and I was going to have to get used to it. I would have to.

"I completely forgot about it," David said suddenly, his tone suddenly changing to a much brighter one. "Happy birthday!" The rest of the team echoed his words and I found myself feeling self-conscious again about being under their gaze. I smiled. 

"Thank you."

"It seems awfully quiet." Spencer said and I nodded, swallowing. 

"The kids are with my parents." Was this only further proof of what we had been doing last night? Did this make it seem as though it had been planned? "We're picking them up later and going out for lunch. And I hope that you're all going to come round for dinner." My official birthday party was taking place tonight and it had only seemed right to invite them.

"I wouldn't miss your cooking for the world." David said and, funnily enough, it was his judgement that I was dreading the most; other than my parents, he was the most culinary acclaimed and I didn't want to disappoint him.

"I'm ready." It still shocked me just how quickly Aaron could transform his dishevelled, casual appearance into one that was wearing a suit and was put together. I guessed that he had had a long time to perfect this skill but his neatly arranged hair was only another reminder that the perfect morning I had imagined in my head wasn't going to happen. 

Spencer made for the door and I looked down at the gently warming pancakes. Even they didn't seem as appealing anymore.

"I'm so, so sorry." I turned to meet Aaron's gaze, noticing the briefcase in his hand. 

"It's not your fault." I said with a shrug. "And besides, it means more pancakes for me." I tried to smile but Aaron's face still remained serious. He was a world away from the man who had seemed prepared to take me on the kitchen counter.

"I'll make it up to you. I promise." This was an echo back to our previous conversation but all suggestion of sexual activity seemed to have gone. I nodded. I knew he would, in his own way.

"I'm counting on it." I turned to reach for a fork, figuring I should eat the first batch of pancakes before they turned cold. I saw Aaron reach out for a pancake of his own and rapped him on the back of his hand with my fork.

"Oww!" 

"You work for the FBI! That did not hurt!" I insisted and Aaron rolled his eyes, taking the pancake he had been trying for before pressing a brief kiss to my cheek and vanishing out the door. 

Now I had a plate of a pancakes and a whole pile of presents and cards to open. And yet, I felt as though the whole balloon that had been my birthday had been deflated.

Happy birthday to me.

\- Thanks for embarking on this journey with me! A happy start that turns into something else by the end. Is that an omen for the rest of the story? Let's find out!


	3. Duo

_A nice little family dinner and some less nice home truths..._

I reached for my drink again, the juice cold against my fingers as I scanned over the restaurant. The rest of the tables around us were filled, the clinking of glasses and the bustling of people filling the air. To my left was an empty chair, my cell resting on the table in front of me. Aaron had apologised again and promised he'd be there any second. I had told him not to worry. No one seemed to be exactly missing him, except perhaps me.

To my right, the kids seemed to be having a very intense coloring competition on the back of their menus while mom continued to complain that their waiter - a peppy, overly-enthusiastic college student named Tyler - was ignoring her on purpose and deliberately depriving her of her gin and tonic.

"It's not even 1." Joe said, with a glance at his watch and mom sighed, twisting back to face the table, swooping her silk scarf over one shoulder.

"I'm a retired police officer. I think that gives me allowance to start drinking whenever I like."

I was surprised that the only argument we had had, so far, was regarding mom's drinking habits. It had been enough of a struggle to gather together everyone at a set time and date and I had known that that wasn't going to be the end of the arguments. It helped that my birthday had fallen on a Saturday, the best day Joe continued to remind me with the sourness that his own had fallen on a Wednesday still clear in his voice.

That was, everyone together aside from Aaron.

Recently, he had had a lot of long-distance cases back to back with each other - it had been four days in Seattle and then nine in San Diego and then six in Fort Worth - and the cases mixed with the fact the heating and electricity in his apartment had gone bust meant that he had been even busier and stressed than usual, if that was at all possible.

The plus side to the disruption at his apartment was that Jack had been having a lot more sleepovers that he ever tended to have and that had been lovely for both me and the girls, but it would have been nicer if Aaron had been there to. Even if sleeping in bed with another person had taken me by surprise at first.

Not that he had exactly been in my bed much. Hence last night...

My family birthday dinner had supposedly started out as a formal get-together but, as it always did whenever we got together, that plan had slid to the sidelines rather quickly and it had turned into a chaotic scrabble over the table for the best seats and best vantage point of the rest of the room. That was how I loved it, no matter how crazy we appeared to outsiders.

I mean, I was still baffled how Aimee had managed to leave the house wearing her leather trousers and mom hadn't pulled her up on it. She might be a fully grown adult but that didn't mean she was exempt from mom critiquing her clothes, apparently.

I passed the menu back over to my dad who could never make up his mind on what to order, my mind already focused on the pasta that I was set on ordering. Pasta that I didn't have to cook myself was always going to be my first choice.

"Should we order?" Mom asked, peering down the table at the kids who I knew were getting restless on account of their hunger.

"How much longer will he be?" Aimee asked, leaning over Joe to get a look at his watch.

"Not long." Those had been his exact words but, in the FBI world, that could mean a whole variety of things. I didn't want to order without him, that was admitting that he really wasn't here and my plans for the day had been derailed even further, but I knew that at some point we were going to have to if he didn't show.

My eyes were pulled from staring at a couple on the far side of the room by a figure making a beeline towards the table. I instantly felt myself begin to smile as he folded his coat over his arm and bent to kiss mom on the cheek. It was Aaron.

And he wasn't wearing the same suit and tie that he had been wearing this morning, meaning he must have stopped back at the house, showered and changed his clothes. He hadn't been rushing over from some sort of FBI emergency like I always presumed him to be; he'd probably been able to have a leisurely shower instead but that was just his personality and his need to always appear put-together. I was sure that this was something that would slowly dissolve with the more time he spent with my family, even if he told me that sometimes he still felt like an outsider.

He settled down onto the empty chair that was beside me, quickly kissing me on the lips and giving me a rueful smile.

"I'm sorry. It's - "

"Don't worry about it." I insisted, noting the genuinely apologetic and hurt look on his face. "You haven't missed anything. Just Aimee complaining about being hungry."

"Please pick something from the menu - " Aimee half-groaned, passing the spare menu over to Aaron as she glared in my direction.

"Just because you insisted on skipping breakfast - "

"I was asleep!" That was the story of Aimee's life. I was surprised she wasn't classified as in constant hibernation, considering how much time she spent in bed.

I looked up as mom frustratedly twisted in her chair again and started clicking in the waiter's direction. I met Joe's gaze and rolled my eyes.

"That's not going to do anything." Dad insisted, smirking slightly. "Someone will come over when they're free."

"All I want is a gin and tonic. Is that really so difficult? The service here is terrible - "

"I actually think that this is where one of my friends works - "Joe said tapping his hands against the table.

"Well, I won't be tipping him." Mom grumbled to which both Aimee and Joe sighed. I was sure that it was one of Mom's favorite pastimes just to grumble and complain about things.

"Which friend is that?" Aimee asked as I moved slightly closer to Aaron, his leg brushing up against mine.

"Tim. We were in the band in high school together. Afterwards he moved to Fayetteville with his mom but I think he's back now." Aimee spent a moment to contemplate this before she looked over the table and mouthed something in my direction. I frowned. What was she doing?

"What?" I mouthed back and Aimee sighed before mouthing the same phrase again.

"He's hot." I frowned again.

"How do you know that?"

"I remember seeing him in Joe's old yearbook."

"He might not be hot now." Aimee shrugged again.

"I'm willing to take that risk. Hot musicians who aren't on drugs are hard to find." I didn't know exactly how to react to this as Aimee turned away from me, taking the final hunk of complementary bread we had been given and popping it into her mouth.  
***  
Once Aaron had been bullied into completing his order and the food arrived, everyone calmed down significantly and our conversation ground to a halt. That conversation didn't fully resume until the plates had been taken away and we were waiting for our desert because, obviously, it wouldn't be my birthday lunch if some kind of cake wasn't involved. That just had to be a given.

What was also a given was that I rarely wore dresses that were as short as the one I was wearing now but I was on the brink of completely changing my opinion. My gray dress might only be resting slightly above my knees but, judging from the way Aaron's hand had been resting on my thigh so far throughout the meal, I wasn't the only one enjoying myself. It was bizarre to think that such a simple, small movement could cause my skin to heat so rapidly and for the tingling sensation to run down my whole leg.

Aaron hadn't stopped smirking for more than a moment. He was having far too much fun knowing the affect he had on me.

"You'd better save some space for later." I said when the desserts arrived and Aimee's chocolate sundae was placed in front of her. It had started out that Aimee and Joe would share desserts but that plan had quickly disappeared when Joe had spotted the banoffee pie on the menu. "I don't want to be eating leftovers for weeks."

"Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?" Joe asked. "It's your birthday. Shouldn't Aaron be cooking or something?"

"I'm on alcohol duty." Aaron said with a shrug, shooting me a quick glance and a smile.

"I've got everything planned out and I don't need you ruining my system." I had been planning my birthday dinner for weeks now, ever since Aimee, Joe and Kelly had demanded that I have some sort of party. I knew that this was mostly so they could just get free drinks and then get drunk but I didn't totally mind. "Besides, I like cooking."

"We'll remind you of that when your four hours in and screaming at the oven." Dad said with a chuckle.

"That's not me." I said firmly.

"We'll see." It was true that Mom and Dad's dinner parties usually ended in a fair few arguments in front of the oven over the whereabouts of the salad bowl or the pesto but that wasn't me. I had to plan everything out to the finest details and plan everything in my head a thousand times.

"Anyway..." Aimee held her extra-long dessert spoon up in the air as though she was declaring a toast. "On to the most important question. Who got you the best present?" I rolled my eyes at the grin that had developed onto her face.

"Why are you being so mean?" She shrugged. "I can't pick. Everything was amazing."

"Well, I'm asking you to pick. I want a definitive answer." I raised an eyebrow and sighed, knowing I was going to have to give some kind of answer because Aimee was not one to drop a subject.

"Well, I did get an amazing card off three certain people - " I said with a smile, peering down to the end of the table where the kids were giggling over something and Lexi was doing her best to spread ice-cream all over her face.

"And they ruined the carpet with all that glitter in the process - " Aimee added.

"That was Jack's idea." Lola defended and I rolled my eyes, knowing that it had certainly not been Jack's idea.

"And someone got me a literal vacation." I said, turning to look at Aaron. He had repeatedly said, via text, that it was less of a vacation and more of a mini-break but that hadn't stopped me from squealing through my cell when I had opened the envelope. At the end of August, Aaron had booked for me and him to go to New York for two days. If that hadn't been enough, the envelope had also included two tickets to see Wicked on Broadway.

I officially had the best boyfriend in the world. I hadn't told him that I had nearly cried when I had opened it, but I presumed he could guess this.

"What if you break up before August?" Aimee said bluntly and I felt my eyes instantly grow wide, a collective gasp descending over the upper half of the table. The kids weren't bothered.

"What the hell?" Joe said slowly and Aimee shrugged.

"Just, you know. Theoretically - "

"I'm still going to go." I said, looking over at Aaron who rolled his eyes. "I guess it would either be Aimee or Penelope coming with me seeing as they're the only other two people who like musicals as much as I do."

"They'd have to fight it out." Joe said excitedly and I noticed Mom sigh heavily.

"But that won't be happening." I said firmly, finishing off my gateau. Why did lately everyone seem so obsessed with Aaron and I's relationship? Kelly kept asking me what stage I thought we were both at. What did that even mean?

"Did your father mention that your grandad is coming to visit soon?" Mom asked and Joe, Aimee and I all looked up at the same time and met each other's gaze.

"No, he didn't." I said, guessing from the expressions on Aimee and Joe's faces that they hadn't known either.

"We don't know exactly when he's coming to visit but he said some time in the next couple of weeks." I swallowed deeply, my throat suddenly becoming dry. Aimee and Joe both looked as anxious as I felt. I slowly placed my spoon down on the table.

"See?" Dad sighed. "Look how happy they are." I felt almost ashamed of our reaction, even though Dad's sarcasm didn't clearly how he felt. I didn't want to feel a wave of dread at the fact of seeing his father but I couldn't help it. "I couldn't say no to him coming over. He wants to see his grandchildren - "

"It's actually very easy to say no." Joe said, with a stern look. "You just say...no."

"Look, I know you don't really like him." Dad started.

"He's the one who doesn't like us." I interrupted.

"And I'm pretty sure he's racist." Aimee added and I gave her an incredulous look.

"Oh, he's very racist." I turned to Aaron who I realized probably had no idea what we were talking about. "Grandad is 85 and, meeting him, you wouldn't think there would be any racist words that he hasn't used yet but every time he comes to visit we're always surprised."

This wasn't an overstatement. He really was the stereotypical idea of a white, Southern farmer whose beliefs - and language - were firmly stuck in the 1950s. And, despite how we had all become increasingly fed-up of his presence around our dinner table, he still insisted on visiting us every once in a while. It was getting tiring.

"What was it that your mother said?" Dad said sharply. "Don't ruin Lizzy's big day by being negative? And what are you all doing? Being negative, so let's stop."

"Yes, let's be positive." Aimee said, plastering an obviously fake grin on her face. "It's not raining, none of us have died in the last four months, even when Lizzy seems to be attracting the serial killer type these days - "

"You're so funny." I deadpanned, leaning in towards Aaron as his hand began to creep up my leg. As well as comments about my relationship, comments about my scrapes with danger were also common and much less fun to throw off.

No, I wasn't intentionally attracting the trouble as Kelly had jokingly asked one day. It had just...begun to happen.


	4. Tribus

_Because everyone loves a party, even FBI agents..._

By the time evening rolled around, I was even more determined not to turn into the person my parents had earlier described. There would be no screaming at the oven or screaming at anyone else.

Yet as soon as people began to arrive, it was clear that not everybody had received this memo. I was certain that the team was behaving even more eccentrically than usual in order to send the kids crazy which, in turn, was going to send me crazy. It was a vicious cycle.

And Aaron was keeping this entire vicious cycle flowing with a steady stream of alcohol. Earlier, I had been seriously considered dumping a load of ice in the bath tub and keep all the bottles there because the fridge simply didn't seem big enough. But, somehow, we had worked out an arrangement to keep all of the bottles cool and that meant it was one less thing for me to worry about on the long list that I had created for myself.

However, it was helping my concentration or my ability to keep cool that whenever Aaron would pass me he would 'accidentally' brush his hands across my hips or kiss my shoulder or whisper something in my ear. He was never usually so directly affectionate, certainly not in public, but I definitely wasn't about to complain, no matter how flustered it made me feel. The house already felt stifling with so many bodies packed together and even with the windows thrown open, his touches were enough to make my face heat up.

I also had an agenda to stick to and nowhere on that agenda did I have time for Aaron brushing up against me, causing me to lose track of just what I was doing. I was sure that he was enjoying himself based of the smirk that seemed to be permanently on his lips but he wasn't the one cooking a meal for more than fifteen people. He just had to serve the drinks, or direct those asking to the fridge.

Besides, as more and more people descended on the house and a greater number of people took control over the living room, there was a greater number of eyes to catch us and I did not need the inordinate amount of teasing his actions were sure to bring. It was a major downside that I had discovered to having a largely open plan house and I had already noticed both Derek and David staring over in my direction. Those two would be loving this and I had a feeling that Aaron would come to regret his choices on Monday morning.

Luckily, with so many people in attendance, I didn't have to worry about the kids being bored. At the moment, JJ, Spencer and Evan were having a very intense Mario Kart battle and, from the volume of shouting, Spencer wasn't doing particularly well as was letting the team down. I knew for a fact that it would have been my siblings starting the fight but they were yet to arrive, as had my parents. I didn't even want to think about the layer of chaos and mayhem that had probably descended over the house. They all had the ability to turn any situation into one of extreme proportions and birthdays were no different. They -

I tore my eyes away from the pasta sauce that was gently bubbling on the stove as the front door burst open and both my parents, Aimee and Joe and a man who I didn't recognise who I figured must be Tim, Joe's old high school waiter friend who he seemed insistent on integrating back into his world. I was sure there must be some ulterior motives going on there.

I noticed that Aimee was wearing an amazing glittery silver jumpsuit along with her usual thick black boots, her hair curling around her shoulders. Within the few seconds that she had stepped into the house, I could see that she was smiling more than she usually was and I didn't think that was because of the warm, welcoming atmosphere.

She had said it herself: hot musicians who weren't on drugs were hard to find and, despite my earlier comments, Tim definitely was still as a hot as his yearbook photo, perhaps even more so, because who looked their best when they were 18 in front of too-bright lights and covered in acne?

"I hope you don't mind." Joe said, approaching me and half-dragging Tim along with him. "He's got no food in his apartment and he can take Kelly's portion." Naturally, Kelly had been supposed to be attending but had had to cancel at the last moment because her grandma had fallen in her home and so it had fallen onto her to care for her.

"Of course I don't mind. He's your friend so I presume he's not a heathen."

"It's nice to meet you." Tim said quickly, before Joe dragged him off back towards the main crowd. Joe had never been the most sociable of people but it was clear that Tim took after Aimee in the respect that he didn't seem fazed by any of the strangers that circled him. He seemed cheerful and charming and it was easy to see why Aimee could develop a crush on him. Because I was sure that she had. I knew my little sister better than almost anyone.

Speak of the devil, as soon as my eyes locked onto Penelope and Mom exchanging a lengthy hug, Aimee approached me, a bottle of beer already in her hand.

"So that's hot Tim." I said with a grin and Aimee rolled her eyes.

"And what do you think?" I looked over at him as I stirred my pasta sauce, watching him shake Derek's hand and laugh at something he said. Aimee's eyes were fixed on him, as if I needed any more clarification about my beliefs.

"I think he's cute. Really cute."

"And?"  
"And I would definitely have him if he wasn't one of my brother's friends and you weren't already on him."

"I'm not already on him." Aimee said firmly, lifting her chin as she crossed her arms. "He's only been back in town for six days and - "

"And yet you're already sizing him up and figuring out how best to get your teeth stuck into him." I could read Aimee's face like a book. I might have missed most of her lovesick teenage phase because I was away at medical school but that didn't mean I couldn't read the signs now.

"If he's friends with Joe then he must be alright." I said slowly and Aimee nodded.

"And we've sorted out the obvious..." I felt myself begin to frown as I reached for the salt and pepper shakers.

"What?" Aimee sighed.

"Whether he's gay or not. But I checked that and, according to Joe's limited conversation with him, he was dating a girl a few months back. That means he's at least bi if not straight so some part of him must be into women." Not only could Aimee barely tear her eyes from him, she had also begun to research the possibility of them forming a relationship. How could she argue that she didn't feel something?

"What if he's still hung up over his ex-girlfriend?"  
"Joe said he's over it." I felt myself begin to smile again.

"You talked to Joe about it?"

"Just casually."

"You didn't let on that you were ready to pounce on him?" Aimee didn't have a subtle bone in her body which was something I both loved and found annoying in equal measure. She never half-heartedly went for something; it was always all or nothing and that was no different when it came to forming attachments with people.

"I am not - "

"Joe definitely knows what you're up to and so do I and so will everyone else if you keep staring at him. If we're being honest, the others probably already know because they're profilers and it's their job to know things." I already got my fair share of comments from the team because of my relationship with Aaron which was why I was so sure that they would be able to read his behavior, and our appearances this morning, and be able to practically record down the hours that we had spent in bed together.

Among all the stress and the birthday wishes, I had begun to forget about that but now the image and the embarrassment was back to the forefront of my mind.

That was just what I wanted.

It wasn't the first time that I had found Aaron's ability, and that of the team's, to so easily read how I was feeling by my behavior and body language to be more of a hinderance than a help and while most of the time I was able to cover it up or defer their questions with a question of my own, I definitely could live without it.

Aaron had promised to try not to do it as often, though I supposed with him it was as conscious as breathing, something that was so ingrained into who he was that it was difficult to switch off. He had also promised that he would try and leave his work at the door whenever he came home which was proving particularly entertaining as well as immensely difficult.  
His work was his life, not only because he was good at it but because you could see how invested he was in what he was doing and just how much he believed in the process and his team. Something like that was difficult to switch off.

I was lucky that I kept relatively normal and stable office hours or I would probably find my work life beginning to seep into the rest of my life too.

I slowly looked around the room, trying not to draw anyone's attention to the way I was surveying the room. I caught sight of Aaron passing around more drinks and my eyes suddenly locked onto the navy sweater that he was wearing, a feature that I had previously ignored because of my anxiety over having enough pasta to feed everybody. It was one of my favorite sweaters that he had and one that I was sure had been in the ironing pile yesterday. Had he ironed while I had been in the shower? Or was that why he had been so late to lunch? I would have to ask him later.

That was, if we were doing much talking later because the looks he kept throwing in my direction were very interesting and were making me want to concentrate on things that were far from my pasta and my salt to pepper ratio.

I was sure the team must have noticed his glances by now, even if they were supposedly off-duty. No person could look at another person so many times in the space of five minutes which such intensity and it not be noticed.

I suddenly jolted back to the oven as one of the many timers that I organized around me started ringing.

Right. I needed to concentrate. I needed to sprinkle the cheese on top of my pasta in order to give it enough time to felt. I needed to do it now. Right now.

"Is that the fire alarm?" I heard Joe shout from the living room and I rolled my eyes.

"You're very funny, Joe." I said firmly, careful as to the amount of cheese I was using. I didn't want it to overpower my sauce. "And you can stop showing off in front of your friend." He didn't say anything because he knew my words were true. He knew it.

I was nearly done. We were almost on the home stretch now and I could feel people's gazes resting on me. I carefully began to divide up the pasta into the bowls before reaching for the ladle and the pan of bubbling sauce. If I dropped any of this sauce anywhere then it was going to be hell to clean up. My hands were beginning to sweat, the combined effort of the heat of the kitchen and the intense stares of everyone.

"If I drop any of this on the floor, then I'm blaming all of you." I said with a smile, hoping that my voice didn't sound too strained and my smile didn't seem too fake.

"And then we can order a Chinese instead." I shot round to face Joe, my ladle still in my hand as I pointed it at him.

"If there's one more word from you then I'm going to lock you in the shed." I wasn't joking at this point. My nerves were on the very verge of snapping and the panic about this evening, more specifically cooking for so many people, had been building up for days. I was particularly worried about cooking for Dave who was Italian and the King of pasta and all of the other accolades that Aaron had praised his food with.

"Mommy!" Lexi's voice rang out over the noise of everyone else and I peered over my shoulder, praying that whatever was about to come about of her mouth was something that could be easily and quickly dealt with. I needed to focus on my pasta and the side dishes and -

"Yes, honey?"

"How long is it until the food's ready?" I felt myself let out a deep breath as I smiled, looking over into her deep blue eyes and wondering how her hair had become so mused and disheveled when all she had been doing was playing video games.

"4 minutes and 10 seconds, exactly, so I'd say about 5 minutes for me to get the plates out?" This answer seemed to please her because she turned around and ran back into the living room, the sound of Emily's triumphant shouting echoing around the room.

***  
I soaked my hands in the almost too-hot water, rubbing the remains of the garlic bread away from the plate. I hadn't been stupid enough to use plates that weren't dishwasher friendly for all of the plates, just the larger ones that were so pretty that I couldn't simply leave them in the cupboard. I didn't mind washing the dishes, not really. I was quite relaxing really and it gave me a chance to breathe and to fully come to terms with how tight my dress was around my stomach.

There had been a lot of food. Perhaps I had gone a little overboard?

Regardless of how much food I had cooked everything had gone fine, almost to the point of running too smoothly. Dave had said everything was delicious, Tim hadn't suddenly turned out to be coeliac and start developing hives and, even though I had stocked up on ice cream and various small desserts, Mom had brought a cake that she'd made in the hours between us leaving the restaurant and them turning up here. Dad had had to hide it in the trunk of the car and they'd carried it in while Aimee distracted me with her latest audition saga.

The best thing though, regardless of how delicious the cake had actually been and how many interesting stories Tim had been able to reveal about his time in Fayetteville, had been the general company and the atmosphere that had been created in the dining room that I only ever used on special occasions. The feeling in the room had made me forget that Aaron's team weren't technically even my own set of friends but they were all such nice people that that didn't even matter.

And, it was always refreshing to see them at a situation that wasn't a crime scene and they didn't need to question any witnesses. Especially Penelope, who I didn't get to see half as much as I wanted to because, for the most part, she was tied to her desk in front of a computer screen.

Everyone was still sat in the dining room, finishing off the last of the alcohol. I was sure that there was an extra box hidden in one of the cupboards somewhere but that was Aaron's secret stash that he saved for special occasions. But if my birthday wasn't a special occasion then what was?

I peered over my shoulder at the sound of footsteps, seeing Aaron approaching me with the cream jug in his hand. Mom had also brought some cream, custard and ice-cream with her because she'd wanted to give people choice as to what to have with their cake. We were both alike in that way - if someone told us not to do something, we'd probably do it anyway.

"Thanks. I knew that I'd - " I hate to bite my lip to suppress my gasp as Aaron slowly began trailing his lips over my exposed neck, sweeping my hair to the side with one hand and clutching at my waist with the other. I allowed my eyes to close momentarily, relishing in the feeling of his slow kisses, his breath on my skin, the heat of his body pressing against my own. "What are you doing?" I murmured, my voice breathy.

"I don't know what you mean." Aaron mumbled, his hands snaking down to my hips as I sighed again.

"You've been doing it all evening. You'd better prepare yourself to get a h - hell of a lot of stick on Monday." I felt Aaron pause for a moment as he pulled back and kissed the side of my head.

"They didn't see anything. I'm very discrete." I raised an eyebrow and folded my arms. I wanted to laugh. Discrete was not the word I would use to describe his movements over the last few hours. "So you want me to stop?"

"I didn't say that." I said firmly, turning to fully face him and smiling at the fleck of pasta sauce he had on his chin. I leaned forward to kiss it, my arms looping round his shoulders as I traced my hands over the light stubble grazing his face. 'In fact, I was thinking - "

"That's dangerous."

"Mmm." I met his lips with my own, drinking in the intoxicating scent of his cologne and the feel of his hair under my fingers. He could be stern and stony-faced one moment and then melt into being a soft puppy in the next. I mean -

"Come on, love birds - " I sprang away from Aaron as though he had electrified me, pushing my arms to my sides and sucking in a deep breath as I looked up to see Derek, an empty beer bottle in his hand, and a sly smile on his face. "We're meant to be chilling out here and not like that." I watched him place his bottle near the recycling, still attempting to calm my breath and hide my blush. "I don't want to think about my boss doing that. It should be illegal. You guys need to come and sit down - "

Aaron and I both watched him re-enter the dining room before I turned to Aaron, my hands on my hips and my eyes wide. "You really think you don't know? How about now?"


	5. Quattour

_It seems that even Lizzy isn't immune to the effects of a certain green-eyed monster. And no, this is definitely not inspired by the way Aaron and Beth first meet...not at all..._

That weekend was the first weekend that Aaron had been free and he'd not been on a case or swamped down with paperwork since he'd been staying with us and I was determined to make the most of it, no matter how strong our hangovers were or how late the night had been. Anything past 10:30 constituted as a late night for me, however, and the stress of the day had apparently had more of an affect on me than I had realised. The minute that everyone had finally left, I had tidied up just enough so that I felt like the place wasn't a complete mess and had then fallen asleep.

It appeared that what my body wanted and what my body needed were two completely different objectives and, as per usual, sleep had won out.

I had been falling on the precipice of sleep when I had felt Aaron crawling into the bed beside me. I had managed to roll onto my side, feeling so tired that it can almost been impossible to move.

"I'm just so tired." I had murmured as Aaron pulled the covers up over us. "I'm sorry." He wrapped an arm around me as I curled into his chest.

"It's okay. You don't need to apologise. Besides - " I had opened one eye at his sudden jovial tone. "I can take care of things on my own - "

I had been able to find just enough energy to prod him in the stomach before closing my eyes again. He really was deceptively dirty minded. You would think that a high ranking federal agent would be a little more mature but apparently not.

Now, we had managed to drag both ourselves out of bed and have the kids dressed for a reasonable time and had decided to head off to the park. The weather was finally beginning to grow warmer, the park was only a ten minute walk away, and Aaron was determined to get back into running regularly again, maybe as much as two or three times a week.

I knew that running was good for your health and it was exercise and everything but there were much better ways to exercise than forcing your body to almost half a heart attack. There was no part of running that I found to be even the slightest bit enjoyable and I had absolutely no idea why Aaron liked it so much but I knew that I didn't have the power, or the right, to dissuade him.

I leaned back against the wall, wrapped in a thin woolen coat because even if the weather was warmer I hated being even the slightest bit cold. I had been ready and waiting by the front door for the last ten minutes, so had the kids who were now sprawled out on the sofa, and for the time first time possibly ever it was Aaron who we were waiting for. He was faffing around checking that he had all of his running gear, collecting some things into his backpack that I didn't even know the purpose of. I watched him grab two bottles of startling blue liquid from the fridge and then a handful of what I presumed were protein bars of some variety.

"If we leave it much longer it's probably going to start raining and then you'll have to run in the rain. Alone. And then you won't have us for motivation." I knew that we were hardly going to be the best at motivating him - the kids would probably be fighting in the sand pit or something - but I was at least going to try. I watched him pause for a moment and felt a rush of hope that he might finally everything he felt he needed.

But no.

"I'm just getting another protein bar." I rolled my eyes.

"You've already got three. You're not climbing a mountain, you know."

"Funny." He raised his eyes for a moment to catch with mine and I slowly shook my head. The only time I ever ran quickly anywhere was if I was late, if there was an emergency at work or if I was being chased and there were no exceptions to that rule.

I turned my head to look at the kids who were now lying on the floor, seeing who could stretch their arms the furthest. They had been excited five minutes ago because they liked being able to run around and go on the climbing frames and I had been excited because they would be able to work off some of their energy. That was if we ever got there...

"Why's Dad taking so long?" Jack asked, twisting around to catch my eye. That was a good question Jack, a very good question.

"Because he's being ridiculous. And excessive. And annoying."

"Alright, I'm coming." He groaned, slinging the backpack over his shoulders and shooting me an amused glare. I surveyed him for a moment, swallowing the lump that had formed in my throat as I folded my arms.

"That's one thing I can get on board with, though."

"What?" His brows furrowed and I smirked.

"You look really good." Who was I kidding? I had always thought that he had great legs and, in a pair of shorts, that fact was made even clearer. There was also something about his forearms and his shoulders that she finds really hot, something that I couldn't even explain, so I was a particular fan of the tight t-shirt that he had opted to wear. He didn't say anything and I shrugged, pushing myself off the wall and winking at him. "Come on, let's go before it starts raining and we get drenched."  
***  
I had found myself a calm, quiet bench that wasn't too far from the kids play area, under a canopy of trees. and was currently watching the kids playing with the frisbee we had brought with us. Aaron was running a circuit that took him around where I was sitting so, every so often, he would run past and I would shout motivational phrases in his direction before he would disappear again. I could get used to the life really. It was very pleasant on my part.

I mean, Aaron looked hot anyway but now he was getting sweaty and pouring some of his water over himself and I was having a very enjoyable time. A very enjoyable time. I was suddenly looking forward to summer much more than I previously had been. Maybe Aaron's frequent running schedule wouldn't be so tedious anymore?

I kicked my legs up onto the bench, straining my neck to see if I could see Aaron running round the bend in the path. He had left his backpack on the bench because he didn't want to push himself too much too soon by lugging around all his supplies as well. I had joked that if he hadn't packed as much then he wouldn't have that problem.

He hadn't looked impressed.

I was seriously tempted to eat one of his protein bars just to see what they tasted like. They cost a fortune from some elite sports website and as I pulled one of the side pocket, I almost wanted to slap myself in horror. I turned the bar over to read the ingredients and while the packaging promised a deep chocolatey flavour I highly doubted that something containing so little sugar could possibly taste anything like chocolate and I didn't want to open myself up to that level of disappointment.

The park was almost deserted, something that I hadn't expected but was grateful of nevertheless. It was a Sunday, after all, so perhaps people had found themselves something better to do than examining the back of a protein bar.

I turned at the sound of footsteps slapping against gravel, my mouth half-open to shout my next string of motivational words in Aaron's direction. The words soon died in my throat, however, when I saw that Aaron wasn't alone. He was bent over, his hand outstretched as he helped a woman to her feet. I immediately noticed that she was stepping gingerly on her ankle and I presumed that she must have tripped and twisted it.

Aaron and the woman were too far away for me to hear the conversation but I could see clearly enough when the woman was gripping onto Aaron's biceps as she grimaced in pain, her face almost brushing up against his chest.

I frowned. She didn't look particularly sweaty seeing as she was supposed to be running. Was she one of those infuriating people who was always polished and sweat-free? I hated those people, partly because whenever I did any kind of exercise my entire body would turn red like a tomato. I even got boob sweat, something that should have never been invented.

I watched Aaron and the woman set off running again, Aaron now running at a much slower pace in order to keep up with the woman. I knew that this was a nice gesture and he was probably only doing it to check that the woman hadn't injured too badly but there was something inside of me that forced me to time their lap on my watch, something that I had done for a couple of Aaron's previous laps when I was feeling particularly bored.

Unsurprisingly, his lap this time was considerably slower because he was keeping pace with her.

I tore my eyes away from the pair of them and looked towards the sandpit. I needed to stop. She was just a runner and Aaron was being nice to her, making sure that she hadn't seriously injured herself. Then why did my stomach still feel so twisted?

"You're doing great!" I shouted, sitting up from where I had been slumped and flicked my hair over my shoulder. "Do you want a protein bar?"

"I'm alright, thanks." I nodded, watching Aaron say something to the woman. I saw her gaze slide to me, her dark green eyes almost making my skin crawl. She was tall, not as tall as I was but fairly so, and dressed in expensive gym gear, her deep red hair pulled back into a high-ponytail. I swallowed as I watched her lean in towards Aaron, her words too quiet for me to hear but I heard her laugh and saw her smirk.

Screw this. That woman knew exactly what she was doing and I wasn't having any of it. If she wanted to play dirty, then that was fine. I'd grown up in the South, the birthplace of saccharine insults and venom disguised as honey, as my grandma used to say.

The kids frisbee suddenly flew over my head, landing on the gravel path. They instantly started arguing about who should have to go and fetch it. I slowly bit my lip, adjusting the belt of my coat before standing up.

"I'll get it." I shouted, shooting Lexi a long glare. I had seen her deliberately throw it far from where both Lola and Jack had been standing. Mischief really was her middle name.

I reached the frisbee just as Aaron and the woman were coming around the path again, having almost finished their next lap. I threw the frisbee back over to the kids play area before holding a bottle of Aaron's blue energy drink out to him. He might look rather attractive when he was covered in sweat but I didn't want him to get dehydrated.

"Thanks." He panted, taking the bottle from my hand. "This is Lizzy."

"Hey. " I forced myself to smile. "I'm his girlfriend so I have to put up with all his sweaty clothes." I shrugged a little in what I hoped was a nonchalant manner, watching Aaron frown slightly.

"This is Fiona." He gestured to the woman who was stretching out her back and she smiled, the expression not quite reaching her eyes. "We used to run together but then she started training more and can now run a lot faster than me."

"It's just practice and working up a routine." She said, mirroring my shrug as she tightened her pony tail and ran her hair through her fingers. "We should start running again like we used to."  
How about no, Fiona? I had to bite my lip to refrain myself from spitting this out.

"Are you okay, though?" I asked, my tone suddenly turning concerned. "I saw you stumble earlier and I've seen you limping."

"Lizzy's a doctor." Aaron explained and I nodded, straightening up a little and folding my arms. I met Fiona's gaze, before she broke away and looked down at her feet.

"It's fine. I'm used to injuries."  
"You should probably go home, you know. You need to put some ice on it, keep it elevated and rest it thoroughly." I could feel Aaron staring at me out of the corner of his eye. I didn't care; there was no way he could possibly side-eye me out of this.

"I'm fine." Fiona repeated, almost through gritted teeth. "I like pushing through the pain." So now she was some kind of inhuman creation that didn't feel pain? Cool.  
"That's not really a good thing, though, is it? You could seriously injure your metatarsals, your ankle, your tibia, especially if you keep running on it - " Fiona's smile began to fade as my eyes grew wider and more concerned. I watched her swallow deeply as her eyes narrowed. Judging from the intensity in her gaze, she didn't exactly like what I was doing.

Well that was just tough luck, wasn't it?

"I guess I'll take another lap to cool down and then head home." Fiona said, zipping up her jacket. "It was nice seeing you again, Aaron." She set off at a jog, her pony tail bobbing up and down. I could feel Aaron staring at me and I turned to face him, a smile on my face.

"What was that about?"

"I've no idea what you're talking about." I said breezily, reaching into my pocket. "Protein bar?"


	6. Quinque

The elevator doors slid closed as I leaned back against the wall, the elevator empty aside from a fatigued-looking porter. The traffic had been better than I'd hoped this morning and I'd arrived a little earlier than usual somehow. That was something that never happened, no matter how much extra time I gave myself in the mornings or how early I forced myself out of bed. There was always some tiny problem that arose, some unforeseen issue that delayed me. What's more, I no longer simply had the girls and myself to get out the door in a morning. There were now five people who I had to take into consideration, and Jack, in particularly, loved his bed and his full night's sleep.

Not that I could blame him. If I was given the option, I would spend the entire day in my bed as well.

Initially, I had worried about how Aaron and I's routines would slot together, seeing as we were both fairly set in our ways and didn't like change too much. I needn't have worried, however, because our morning routines were more similar than I ever could have imagined. We set our alarms for the same time and both got ready before heading down for breakfast. This was one area that I'd clearly had influence as Aaron told me he usually skipped breakfast which had started me on a somewhat medical-based rant about how breakfast was the most important meal of the day.

In short, I couldn't survive until lunchtime without food and didn't understand how other people could either. 

I was the one who dropped the kids off at school, purely because the school was on my route to work and Aaron would have to go out of his way and the journey would take double the time. We hadn't really talked about it, it was just something that had...happened.

This was the way that most of our relationship had emerged since Aaron and Jack had started staying with us. We hadn't really talked about the logistics other than the first few awkward days when I was constantly showing Aaron where everything was. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy them staying with us because I really did - the whole prospect just took a lot of getting used to.

I also didn't know jut what to longevity of the situation was and it was a subject that I hadn't figured out how to broach. It had started off because Aaron's flat was inhabitable while it was fixed, something that was in the process of being done because the electricians and plumbers were having problems locating the correct parts, but we hadn't talked about whether them staying with us was going to be a permanent thing or whether they would drop back into their old lives.

Was it too soon to be moving in with someone? We had been dating nearly 8 months now though I knew that, especially when children were involved, the time scales for anything could be shifted. 

The elevator halted and the doors lid open, the porter slowly meandering off down the corridor. I would just have to wait and see what happened. I couldn't force or push anything and I didn't want to. I wanted Jack and Aaron to be happy with whatever decision they made. I would just have to adjust, if necessary.

I stepped out into the corridor, catching sight of the front desk and I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. In any other circumstance, being early for work would be a good thing but, in reality, it just meant that I had to put up with Kelly and Gonzalez flirting for longer.

Though, I supposed, I should really call him Samuel now, seeing as we were all on better terms and we'd stopped thinking of him as quite as much of a jerk.

Hartner had been sacked from the hospital after the result of the month long inquiry and, rumor had it, was now working in Kentucky somewhere. That had been one of the best days at work I'd possibly ever had but, since his departure and Gonzalez's allowance to stay, Kelly had grabbed the chance to flirt with him at every opportunity and he mirrored her behavior.

Whenever I asked her, she insisted that nothing was going on but I wasn't blind or deaf. And even if nothing really was going on, Kelly clearly wanted something to be happening. She badly wanted something to be happening.

I had to admit that he could be pretty smooth and charming sometimes - and hot as Kelly kept reminding her. It seemed to be every day that I would arrive at work and Samuel would be leaning over the front desk, a coffee in his hand, talking to Kelly about something. Every. Day.

And, oh look who just so happened to be leaning over the front desk on this fine morning? What was his excuse going to be this time?

"Morning." I called with a smile, coming to stand next to Samuel and placing my bag down on the floor. He waved at me and Kelly looked up from her computer, her bright red lipstick shining.

"Morning."

"How's your grandma?" I hadn't forgotten about how shaken up Kelly had seemed on the phone when she'd told me that couldn't make my party, no matter how stressed I had been that day or how distracting Aaron had been. 

"More shaken up than anything but she didn't hurt herself too badly. She's using it as an excuse to watch all her favorite soaps on repeat."

"I'm glad." I said with a grin, watching Samuel gulp down his coffee next to me. They certainly shared one thing in common and it wasn't just their Hispanic heritage. 

"I'm sorry that I missed your party..."

"No, don't worry about it, I understand." I insisted and Kelly smirked, leaning forward to rest her chin on her manicured hand.

"No, I really am sorry that I missed all that free booze."

"There's still more whenever you want to come over." I grinned, rolling my eyes slightly as I re-tucked my blouse into my skirt.

"What about me?" Samuel asked, a smirk on his face that soften his entire demeanor. "Where's my free booze?" It was almost startling how intimidating he had initially seemed and yet now he was one of the most harmless, gentle and particularly irritating members of the floor, if for no other reason than he was stealing Kelly away from me.

"You have to pay." Kelly said flatly and he pouted, something that I knew Kelly found very attractive in a guy. Did he know this? Or was that just another one of his flirtation techniques? Or did he not even realise and was simply behaving naturally?

"Haven't you got some pre-op checks to be doing or something?" I said with a sigh, Kelly glaring at me out of the corner of my eye. There had been a lot of this going on in my life recently. Had I been acting particularly jealous lately? Did I have some kind of hormone imbalance?

"I was getting all of my tools out for this morning but my cupboard has been completely cleared out of scalpels - "

"Really?" Surgery wings were usually overflowing with scalpels and, for that, reason it was the first place you went whenever you wanted one.

"Really. Someone must have been doing an inventory - "

"A bad one." Kelly added, as she reached for her cell out of her purse.

"And so I came to get some from your cupboard and we got talking." From what I had seen when I'd come out of the elevator, talking didn't seem to cover it.

"That's just lovely isn't it." I said with an obviously fake grin, turning sharply towards Kelly. "Have you got my patient list for the day?"

"It's coming up." My patient lists had been growing ever so slightly longer since Sylvie had begun reducing her practicing hours in order to concentrate more on the research side of things. Technically, Sylvie's patients were supposed to be spread out evenly between all the members of the department but it seemed that it was mostly myself and Becky who were picking up the slack. They'd claimed it was simply down to 'scheduling', whatever the hell that meant.

I felt my cell vibrating in my pocket as Samuel disappeared into the storage room, no doubt looking for his missing scalpels. It was a text from Aimee 

R U free to take me & joe to audition? X

No, I'm working??? xx

After the success that Hairspray had had over Christmas, it was easy to understand why the local theatre would want to put on another musical. I already knew that the plan was to do Grease and had immediately known that Aimee would desperately want to go for Sandy. I wasn't too sure about Joe seeing as musicals weren't really his thing but I was sure that Aimee would make sure he was involved in some way.

You might have free time, idk X

What's this free time u speak of? xx

:D X

It's k now, tim's giving us a lift ;) He's auditioning too X

Smooth :) xx

Of course Tim was auditioning for the musical too. Aimee would only be attracted to someone who shared her passion for the theatre arts and now, if they both got parts, it would be way for them to get to spend more time together. It was almost as though Aimee had planned this.

Is he going for Danny? xx

Of course X

What'll happen if you both get in? XD xx

My dreams will come true :D Sorry for bothering you btw X

It's fine, Kel's just flirting :( xx

U can flirt with Aaron? ;) X

I try not to txt him at work, don't want to distract him. He's too busy most of the time anyway xx

You can be vv distracting ;) X

????? xx

Gtg, ttyl X

I could be distracting? Given the events of the last couple of days, I think we'd come to the conclusion that it was in fact Aaron who was distracting with his slight touches and glances and smiles in my direction that no one else saw. Not me.

***  
My lunch break was in half an hour once I finished with my next patient but before that I had a five minute break in order to reorganize my desk, grab myself a drink and check my cell. At least, that was my plan but I always ended up getting sidetracked with something.

I closed my office door behind me, allowing a group of patients to pass in front of me before approaching Kelly at the front desk. I paused for a moment, my eyes narrowing slightly in confusion as I saw that it wasn't only Kelly sat behind the computers. There was another woman, her honey-blonde hair flowing down her back, sat there also. In all the stress of planning my birthday, I had completely forgotten about the email we'd received a couple of weeks ago about the second receptionist starting this morning..

She was only part time and wasn't taking over from Kelly completely not having a second pair of hands just meant that Kelly didn't have to run all over the place like a mad person in order to answer the phones and reply to emails. It also gave her someone to talk to but, knowing Kelly, she could find a way to talk to anyone.

I knew her name was Hannah and I suddenly realised that she must be the person I had heard Evan and some of the other doctors talking about when I'd passed her in the corridor. It hadn't even clicked in my mind. I hadn't heard anyone say a bad word against her so far and, judging from the way she was laughing about something with Kelly, she thought she was alright as well.

There was also the fact that she was gorgeous. She looked quite similar to me in our colouring, if I had lived in Australia all my life and was now glowing from within as a result. She just seemed to exude something that made her whole being glow and shine beneath the harsh hospital lights and I couldn't put my finger on it. Her outfit was simple, a pair of jeans, a white shirt and a light denim jacket, and yet she still looked incredible.

I pulled my bra strap back onto my shoulder where it had been sliding down my arm and swallowed. I'd woken up this morning feeling a bit crap - not ill per say - but just not entirely confident and good about my body. Hannah had done absolutely nothing towards me, we hadn't even spoken yet, but as I stared over at her as she reached to grab a pen I couldn't help feeling slightly...jealous. I didn't even know if jealous was the right word to describe what I was feeling.

It wasn't a sharp, angry jealously like I had felt with Fiona in the park yesterday but more of a sad jealously and an uncomfortable feeling resting in the pit of my stomach. I really needed to get a grip, didn't I? I needed to stop being so childish and get on with my work, rather than thinking so much about what was going on in my head. I didn't have the - 

"Dr. Harmon?" It was Hannah, her light brown eyes glancing over at me as Kelly answered the phone. She also called me Dr. Harmon because as well as being outstandingly beautiful, she was also polite.

"Sorry." I pushed myself off the wall and made my way over to the desk, ignoring the cold, stifling feeling that was now growing inside me. "I was just thinking. I really love your jacket by the way."

"Thanks!" She grinned, the phone beside her suddenly beginning to ring as I caught sight of my next patient stepping out of the elevator. I could feel Kelly starring at me out of the corner of my eye, her eyes sharp and narrow. Could she see how I was feeling?

No. I pushed those feelings down. I didn't have the right to feel whatever I was feeling towards Hannah. That was silly and immature and I needed to be more confident in my own skin rather than pining for - 

"Dr. Harmon?"  
"Miss Baker, please, come in - "


	7. Sex

I pushed the front door open, grabbing my bag from the floor and swinging it over my shoulder. I had completely forgotten about the fact that the door was already open - Aaron and the kids being already home - and had spent the last five minutes attempting to find my house keys which had swam to the bottom of my bag where I couldn't find them. That was another benefit about Aaron and Jack staying with us, though not one that I got to exercise very often seeing as was usually the one who got home first. Today was an anomaly. 

I stepped into the hallway, closing the door with my shoulder, and was immediately hit with a deliciously rich aroma wafting from the kitchen. Had Mom made something? Was Mom here?

I peered around the side-table to see Aaron hovering over the stove, a striped apron hung around his neck and a wooden spoon in his hand that was stirring the pot of whatever currently smelled delicious. My eyebrows furrowed despite a smile forming on my face. Aaron wearing an apron was something that I could never get used to but a sight I found incredibly appealing. 

"What's going on?" I asked, placing my keys down on the table and slipping off my light trench coat. Aaron suddenly looked up, his hair slightly mused, and my smile grew even wider as I stepped into the kitchen.

"I thought we could have a nice dinner. I've been to the store and picked up some bits and - "

"And we've got cake!" Lola was sat at the dining table, a sheet of paper in front of her that I presumed was homework, but turned around to face me as she said this, a beaming grin on her face.

"Really?" I looked over at Aaron and he shrugged, his eyes focused on whatever was cooking in his pan. Aaron's cooking ability was something that I occasionally overlooked, after years of making the dinner by myself, but something that I knew I needed to appreciate more. The man really could cook and also happened to look damned good in an apron. 

"We spent the day in Richmond helping out with a shooting. The profile was simple and we were able to catch him. I've a little extra paperwork that I need to do later but we were all able to come home early."

"That's great." After a day of feeling crap, a level of crap that I didn't quite understand but knew that something didn't feel right inside my body, this was exactly what I needed. Something warm and comforting and a cake, cake that I didn't have to prepare myself. "How long will the food be?"

"About five minutes?"

"I'll go and round Lexi and Jack up." I allowed myself a moment to lean forwards, Aaron's lips briefly brushing with my own as I looped my arm around the crook of his elbow before I pulled away and I turned towards the stairs.

"And I've got something else for later - " I looked over my shoulder to see Aaron gesturing towards a bottle of red wine with his wooden spoon, a devilish smile on his face.  
***  
As I'd predicted, dinner was lovely and even the kids ate everything. Aaron had kept insisting that the recipe wasn't his but one of Dave's best, and most simple, and he'd been ordered that if he somehow messed it up he had to go over to his house for cooking lessons. Had he asked Dave for the recipe or was it one he'd been storing for a while? 

It was later now, the kids were in bed and I'd managed to squeeze in a shower and a chance to wash my hair before getting changed into my pajamas. A pair of loose sweatpants and a cami never make me feel particularly sexy but washing my hair always made me feel better. It was strange how such an easy gesture could alter your mood, whether that was for better or for worse.

I leaned back against the cushions behind me, a glass of wine in my hand as my hair gently curled around my shoulders as it dried. Aaron had gone to fetch a bottle of beer, claiming that too much red wine always gave him a headache. Then why had he bought the bottle? It had hit me, stupidly, a little selfishly, that he must have bought it because he knew I liked it.

"Dave was asking me some questions about what I'd been doing at the weekend." Aaron sat down next to me, his arm resting along the back of the couch and his knee gently pressing into my calf. I raised an eyebrow, taking a gulp of wine. I knew that he was going to get comments about what had been going on between us at the weekend, even if they didn't specifically refer to a scenario. His team were too intelligent not to have seen it.

"Hmm?" I wanted to blame the blush rising on my cheeks to the heat of the room and the glass in my hand but I knew that that wasn't true.

"You okay?" I nodded, smiling as I turned to him.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"You sure?" My fingers tightened around the stem of my glass. I smirked, narrowing my eyes slightly.

"Are you profiling me? Because we've talked about that."

"I'm trying to be a good boyfriend." He said warmly, sipping his beer as he rested his hand on my upper back. "And caring about your feelings." He could see through me like I was a piece of paper. I hated how transparent I felt around him, sometimes, and around the rest of the team because it was the same feeling. I was usually so good at hiding everything and not letting anything get to me. I didn't have a choice to be that anymore and I hated it.

"I don't really want to talk about it." I murmured, sipping my wine and knowing how pathetic that sounded. We'd agreed to share our feelings a little more and I just couldn't. I couldn't do it.

Whenever I did feel down, which was as often as anybody else I thought, I didn't tend to tell anyone. Maybe this was because I knew my friends and family so well, and they knew me, that they didn't have to ask if I was okay because they just knew that something wasn't quite right. This was when Aimee would pull out her most amusing audition stories or ask about a TV show we both watched or Dad would remind me just how proud he was of me and how much the girls looked up to me.

I knew Aaron well, but I didn't think that well. Or was I just feeling irritated that he was forcing me to think about my feelings when no one else really did.

"I might be profiling you a little..." Aaron admitted quietly after a moment as I bit my lip. "You pick at your nails when you're feeling uncomfortable and you won't look anyone in the eye."

"I can't fault you at being a profiler," I laughed lightly and Aaron nodded.

"And you change the subject." Right. He wasn't wrong, I did. I sighed, my body seeming to compress as I slumped against his shoulder.

"I just feel - shit." I said flatly, for want of a better word. Aaron's arm curled around me, spreading warmth across my side.

"Are you sick?"

"No. I just...I'm not feeling great about myself today." Aaron slipped his free hand into my own and I had to refrain from pushing him away. Whenever I felt like this I always had the inclination to be as alone as possible and not have to be in contact with anyone else. Was that particularly healthy? Probably not, but it was how I felt safest.

"Do you feel like this a lot?" I shrugged, allowing him to pull me closer into his warmth. 

"Everyone feels rubbish about themselves sometimes, don't they?" Aaron nodded, his hand softly combing through my hair. 

"Did anything - Were you bullied in high school?" I turned to look at him, a frown on my face.

"Is that a guess? Or have you been talking to my parents?" 

"It's usually high school where these feelings start developing." He said as I swallowed deeply. It had been a guess. He didn't know exactly; he was just making a hypothetical statement.

"I didn't have a very good freshman year." I said slowly, watching the wine swill around in my glass. "I hated myself for nearly the whole thing. Sophomore year, too. We'd just moved to Virginia and - " I paused for a moment, my voice hitching in my throat. I wasn't sure hating myself was even enough to cover those feelings. "Sometimes those feelings come back which is stupid because it was nearly twenty years ago."

"The experiences they we have in our childhood can affect us more than anything in adult life. There's been studies on it." I nodded. I knew that. I'd seen enough cop shows and attended enough seminars about dealing with children to know that those young, formative years could leave the biggest impact on a person. And yet I still felt like I should have been able to let go of those feelings by now. I hated feeling weak and that was all that those years had given me.

"Why did you feel like that?" I shrugged, not really wanting to say the words. I'd forced myself to try and block out those times. It clearly hadn't worked.

"I guess there was a lot of change going on. I had a new school, no friends because I'd arrived part-way through the year, a new house, I was much taller than most of the girls in my year and even some of the boys. I just felt uncomfortable, all the damn time. It was the hormones and the spots and the retainers and I had really big boobs compared to the rest of the girls and - " It sounded so stupid and pathetic and I couldn't believe that I was even telling Aaron this. He didn't care about the time I'd had my braces tightened the day before a French speaking exam and had spent the whole day crying.

"This is what we're supposed to talk about." Aaron said slowly, as though he could read my mind. "The things that make us feel upset and then they make them better together. Isn't that what you told me?" I hated it because it was true and we both knew this. I smiled a little and rested my head on his shoulder.

"I don't listen to my own advice, you know that. I say it but it doesn't go through to my head."

"You're allowed to be down." Aaron said slowly, rubbing comforting circles on my back. "You don't have to be Wonder Woman all of the time." I smirked, knowing that Joe would be very proud of this reference because of his obsession with superhero comics. "The kids decided that she's you." He was grinning, a warm smile on his face that instantly made me feel a little brighter.

"So you're Captain America, obviously." He nodded slowly, looking down at our free hands that were now intertwined. I'd heard Jack call Aaron this on my occasions and had even heard some of the team refer to him as this. Jack saw him as a superhero, someone who could protect him and solve all his problems and who could never be beaten. It seemed that the girls also thought this of me. I didn't think I would ever be able to live up to that idea no matter how hard I tried. "Because he's the best superhero. Apparently."

"You are a successful doctor with a wonderful family, lovely home, beautiful children, I think you're amazing and beautiful - " I snorted as a blush burst onto my cheeks, Aaron squeezing my hand. I had never been good at accepting compliments. I wondered whether that was something else that had developed from my freshman year days.

"You need to have more confidence too, though." I said firmly, draining my glass of wine. "You're a former prosecutor, now a renowned FBI agent with a gun. You're the definition of tall, dark and handsome - "

"I'll take that on board." He said smirking as I started giggling and tilted my head back slightly as Aaron ran his hand up my arm to tangle it in my hair. He gently pressed his lips to mine, the glass of his beer bottle pressing into my arm and contrasting with the heat that was flooding through my entire body. I wrapped my hands around his neck, allowing him to press more of his torso against me and -

We sprung apart at the sudden knock at the door, my breath beginning to race. I saw Aaron swallow deeply, his eyes darting to the windows before pushing himself off of me and placing his beer bottle down on the coffee table.

"I'll get it." I leaned forwards to place my wine glass on the table, resting my head against my forearms. My face still felt flushed, not only from the kiss but from the embarrassment that I felt at admitting my teenage problems. It was silly because Aaron was right - that was what we were supposed to talk about - and yet it still seemed completely unnatural to me.

"Lizzy?" I peered over my shoulder and almost jumped out of my skin. Standing in the hallway, a waterproof jacket thrown over his arm, was Evan. Evan Evan. In my house.

"What are you doing here?" I questioned, pushing myself up from the couch and walking over to him as Aaron reached for his beer bottle.

"I'm sorry for interrupting the date night." Evan said with a smirk, gesturing to the flowers on the dining table and the wine bottle that was next to it. I rolled my eyes; if I had been blushing before then I was certainly blushing now, even if there was absolutely nothing for me to feel embarrassed about. I was never going to be able to live this down.

"What do you want?" I said firmly, the awkward smile on my face showing that I wasn't annoyed at his presence.

"You left your lunchbox in your office. I was supposed to give it to you earlier but I forgot." He pulled a familiar plastic container from his pocket and handed it to me. I hadn't even realised I had forgotten it. Was that how zoned out I had been feeling today. I never forgot anything. I didn't even want to look at Aaron because I knew that he would be looking pensive. If me admitting I had been feeling low didn't mean anything, me forgetting something certainly did.

"Well, you're wearing different clothes than you were earlier." I said stubbornly in an attempt to diffuse the tension building up in the room. Evan shrugged, looking down at his polished dress shoes that he certainly wasn't wearing this morning.

"I went on a date." He said with a sigh and a shy smile and I felt my eyes widen.

"No he'd didn't."

"I did." He said with another sigh, folding his arms. I stared at him, my mouth partly agape.

"And? How was it?"

"I'm still thinking about it."

"Sure thing." I wasn't going to let him drop this. I would be asking him questions about his date for weeks now.

"And please don't tell Kelly, at least not yet, because she'll never shut up about it." This was a fact and I nodded, smirking.

"Let's both agree never to speak about this again." I wanted to turn to Aaron and see whether this could apply to our conversation too. I doubted it. Aaron had a memory that rivalled mine. He never forgot anything of importance.


	8. Septem

The next day, as I stepped out of the elevator, I was greeted with almost exactly the same sight. Look who was here. Again.

"Do you ever leave?" Samuel raised an eyebrow at me as I approached, looking up at me from where he was resting his head on his hand. He shrugged.

"You have a better break room. Ours doesn't have a TV and you have more talkative and lovely people." Kelly seemed to be fighting with a stapler but I knew that she was listening to his every word. It did seem to be a general rule that surgeons were stressed out all of the time and were apparently too stressed to talk. Maybe his constant fixture here really was just because Kelly was more talkative than his fellow surgeons. 

Or maybe it was because he had a thing for Kelly. I think I knew which the answer was.

"I'm back for more scalpels, anyway." He said, pushing himself off the front desk.

"Really? How many people are you cutting open?"

"We did do a lot of operations yesterday, I didn't think we did that many but obviously some of the other surgeons took more than I did."

"You should send an email about that. Obviously the hospital isn't buying enough scalpels." Samuel nodded, taking a sip of his coffee and looking over at Kelly who was still fighting with a stapler. Maybe the hospital needed to invest in some more staplers as well as just scalpels.

Or, more likely, Samuel wasn't even that bothered about the scalpels. He just wanted an excuse to come and talk to someone.

Well, he might be coming here to talk to someone and it definitely wasn't me.

 

"No Hannah?" Kelly shook her head.

"She's only coming in after lunch."  
"Right." I had a morning to mentally prepare myself for the torrent of emotions that had been hitting me yesterday that I hadn't even been able to describe.

"Good morning." I turned to see Evan, dressed in his usual uniform of a button down and slacks, his glasses sliding down his nose. He was clutching some reports in his arms, his eyes scanning between Kelly and Samuel. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who had recognised just how often Samuel was hanging round this side of the floor.

"Morning. Did you do anything interesting last night?" His eyes sharply met mine, his eyes narrowing as I started to smirk.

"No, nothing much." He said with a shrug. The sight of Evan stood in my hallway, dressed in the smartest suit I had ever seen him in and clutching my lunchbox while amusedly looking between mine and Aaron's expressions was a sight that was not going to leave my mind for a while. "And what about you?"

"Just watched a film." I said nonchalantly, even if a film had been the very last thing I had done last night. Evan nodded and I quickly swallowed, turning back towards Samuel who was now looking between Evan and I as though we had sprouted two heads.

"What the hell are you doing down here? You need to get back to your rooms - " Evan said firmly, slapping Samuel on the back with his folders and giving him his hardest expression. Evan might be joking around most of the time but it wasn't difficult to see just why he was on the board of governors with his steely glare.

"I was just - "

"I know exactly what you're doing and I'm not paying him to flirt. You can do that on his time off."

"We're not - " Kelly and Samuel instantly began complaining at the same time but Evan was having none of it. He raised his eyebrow at Samuel, impatiently tapping his foot as he waited for him to start walking with him back to the surgery wings. After a moment, he rolled his eyes, gulped the rest of his coffee and begrudgingly started following Evan back down the corridor, his shoes squeaking on the tiles.

I turned back towards Kelly and found her staring at Samuel's back, a clutch of paperclips in her hand. I rolled my eyes, shaking my head slightly as her eyes jolted back to mine. "You really have got it bad, haven't you?"

"Shut up."

"What are you going to do? You need to ask him out." Her eyes slid down to her computer, twisting a lock of hair around her finger.

"I don't know. He might just be being nice - "

What? Excuse me? I couldn't believe what I was hearing. What exactly had she been drinking this morning?

"Who is this and what have they done with Kelly Santiago?" Kelly opened her mouth to speak but I interrupted her. This was not who Kelly was. "There's being nice and then there's using scalpels as an excuse to come and talk to you every day. I'm supposed to be the blind one when it comes to things like this." It was a running joke that I had come to accept over the years that I could apparently never see when someone had feelings for me but, currently, it wasn't me who was having that problem. "

"And even I can see that the guy's interested in you. He's hot, we've both agreed on that. He's clever, apparently, because they don't let just anybody be a surgeon. He's funny, he's nice, he's not a dick anymore - "

"Alright Lizzy, I get it." I paused for a moment, watching Kelly's narrowed expression and the tension in her frame. "If you like him so much you should ask him out." Kelly stared back at me, her bottom lip caught in her teeth.

"What was that?"  
"What?" Kelly turned away from me, reaching for another piece of paper. I knew how much I hated it whenever someone told me to ask someone out and I wasn't sure. They didn't know what was going on in my head, just as I didn't fully understand Kelly and Samuel's situation. I squeezed my eyes shut before reopening them. I didn't need to take out my frustration on Kelly. She wasn't the one causing the fog to descend over my thoughts. "Sorry." I said slowly, watching her expression. "I was being really forward. I don't know what got into me."

"No. I'm sorry. I just - I don't want to mess this up. I really likes him, more than any guy I've liked for a while." I could see that. I could see that, among their talk of scalpels and photocopiers, there really was something between them. "I don't want to ruin it."

"There's absolutely nothing you could do to ruin it." I said firmly, reaching over the desktop to squeeze her hand. "Nothing."

"You sure?"

"Yes. I'm positive."  
***  
I couldn't wait for my lunch break, not only for the bagel that was waiting in my bag but to also carry on talking with Kelly and to apologise again for basically shouting in her face about how she should decide her love life. I needed to calm down and just keep my mouth shut if I couldn't complete pleasant conversation while in my current mood.

However, stepping out into the foyer, I found the front desk to be empty. Hannah was yet to arrive but now Kelly was also absent. I brushed away any remaining crumbs of cookie from my lips and pulled my hair over one shoulder, checking both ends of the corridor for any sign of her bright fuchsia shirt-dress. Nothing.

I turned towards the break-room, reaching for the carton of mango juice that I'd brought with me that was going spare from Lola's lunchbox and had found to be weirdly addictive, and saw both Kelly and Samuel, their backs to me, watching the TV screen with avid eyes.

Because, obviously, Samuel was here. Where else would he be?

"What's going on?"

"A breaking news report." Samuel said coldly, his arms folded, his dark grey eyes fixed on the screen. I felt myself stiffen as I turned to screen, Kelly unmoving as the text and images rolled onto the screen. I had dealt with serial killers and violent gangs and yet somehow, for some reason, this seemed different.

Four cops had been found dead at a warehouse, buried under trash, and the initial report was that they had been burned alive after being doused in gas. I saw Kelly physically recoil after a brief image of the bodies was shown on the screen and Samuel whistled through his teeth, the piercing sound filling the air.

"That can't have been fun." He murmured, my eyes immediately picking up on the words that flashed across the screen. The police, initially, thought that the crime was related to gang activity and I was instantly thrown back to the group that Mike had been part of, the group that had owned the city by controlling their fear and their movements. I prayed that history wasn't about to repeat itself.

"We never normally have a problem with gangs, do we?" Kelly asked, looking over at me and I knew that she too had to be thinking back to Mike. Samuel nodded.

"The only gangs we normally have to deal with are groups of kids hanging out aside the mall. Not murderous and violent ones - "

"Do you think Aaron will be on the case?" I shrugged, as the news story flipped to one about the rising price of oil.

"I don't know. They do usually get the strange ones."

"And four cops being reduced to a crisp is certainly strange." Samuel confirmed.

"It's such a violent way to kill them." I mused, brushing some hair from my face. "And why would a gang go to all that trouble? Why not just shoot them?" I saw Kelly look over at me, a bemused look on her face.

"You've been watching far too many crime shows. And hanging around with him too much - "

"Thanks." I said sarcastically, taking a long gulp of my mango juice.

"I'm joking, I'm joking. You're a beautiful couple and I loves you together and I'm your biggest fan!"

"That's more like it." I said with a grin, looking over at Samuel's still stern expression. A killing such as this, so brutal and seemingly unprovoked, was rare. Rare enough that his tense expression was warranted. Rare enough that I knew Aaron was bound to be pushed to take the case, especially as it was so close to home. And murders always seemed to spiral out of control far more quickly whenever the police were involved.

\- A new murder! But what's going on? And what about Lizzy?


	9. Octo

_A good old-fashioned dun dun dunnnnn moment for your enjoyment..._

That evening, it was an already acknowledged fact that Aaron was going to be getting back from work late if the torrent of news reports on the TV was anything to go from. Even when he did return home, the bags under his eyes stark against his skin, he didn't talk much. I could hardly blame him because he looked as though he'd ran a marathon and, from what he did say, had been trapped in a police station arguing with combative police captains about being allowed on the case for most of the day.

The case was just gruesome. That was the only way I could describe it and whenever I took a moment to think about it, in between cooking my dinner and coercing the kids to take a bath, I found my mind being filled with horrible images. I also didn't like the sound of a violent gang that were roaming the streets of Quantico setting cops on fire for no apparent reason. I had hoped my scrapes with gang culture had died when Mike had been arrested along with his compatriots but, sadly, that didn't seem to be the case.

It was bizarre because, as Kelly, Samuel and I had said earlier, this type of thing rarely ever happened around here and the crimes were certainly never as brutal or unexplained. I was struggling with how to digest it, the only thought in the back of my head being that I had dealt with serial killers before so I would be absolutely fine.

But that was the thing. I had dealt with similar occurrences of crazed killers and a mob mentality and I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have had to cope with that level of fear and panic and brutality, nor should anyone else. But now that I was being forced to deal with it again, it almost didn't register in my mind. It was now just another one of those things that I was going to have to grow and accept and I didn't want to have to accept death and murder.

I had had enough of death while living back in Oklahoma and, for the most part, those deaths had either been cattle or a wild coyote. Not people.

Thankfully, I hadn't had to try and explain any of this to the kids yet because they didn't seem to have seen any of the news reports on TV, which in itself was a miracle. I had had enough awkward conversations with them for a while, even if they had been very important but awkward conversations, mostly involving Jack. It had all instigated from when Jack had accidentally called me mom over dinner, prompting Aaron and I to talk about it first before I broached it with him. It had been a whole new situation that I had to figure out how to handle and the whole thing had made my brain ache.

It wasn't that I minded or didn't like him calling me mom, that was never the issue. I just didn't want him to think that I was trying to replace his real mom and that he had to try and forget about her because I could never do that and I would never want to do that. Hailey wasn't going anywhere, in anyone's memory and I didn't want her to. I had needed Jack to know that.

We had hugged and then cuddled on the sofa watching a film while eating popcorn and waiting for Aaron to come and pick him up. I wouldn't be surprised if he had forgotten about the whole thing by now. But, then again, children had the ability to remember the strangest and most specific events that had relevance to them.

I knew that it must be very confusing for him sometimes, seeing his Dad spending time with another woman and knowing that she wasn't Mom. In a way, it was easier for the girls and I knew that they would probably never call Aaron Dad, unless it was a genuine slip of the tongue. With the girls, there was a chance that Clint could - even though I knew he never would - come back into our lives but Haley couldn't and Jack had to deal with that fact.

I had fallen asleep with a raging headache and pangs of sadness in the pit of my stomach. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair.  
***  
Wednesday had started as a usual day with my second patient vomiting over the waiting room floor only for my sixth patient to do exactly the same thing less than three hours later. By this point in my relatively short career, vomiting had become as normal as breathing. I didn't even bat an eyelid, something that both disgusted and amused Kelly and Samuel who, of course, had been loitering at the front desk at this exact moment.

By the time mid-afternoon hit, however, my day began to turn a little more unusual. After finishing with a patient, I checked my cell like I always did and found a text from Aaron. This wouldn't have been unusual, if I didn't know he was currently being rushed off his feet by all the media attention that the current case was receiving.

The message itself didn't help to clarify anything, either.

Can you come over to the precinct when you've finished work?  
Aaron xx

Luckily, my last appointment was suddenly cancelled because there seemed very little point in me running any checks when Julia Andres had already gone into labor and was being treated at a different hospital. After calling to check that Julia was okay and everything was progressing as it should and telling my parents that I would be a little late in picking the kids up, I could start making my over, a thousand questions flooding my mind and an obscure late-80s playlist blaring on the radio.

It was beginning to become a regular thing getting called into the FBI from the hospital by a cryptic text message, but I never usually received them from Aaron. This was the change that, if possible, pushed me to start worrying more than I usually did when I was called over at short notice.

It had to be about the case, about the four cops who had been found burned alive. That was the only reason I could think of. But how was I possibly involved this time? I didn't know any of the victims because I had already researched their names. Was one of them friends with Mom? She had been a cop until fairly recently and, more likely than not, had known them. Did this involve Mom in some way?

Oh shit. Shit.

What if it did? Mom. Was she okay?  
***  
At least, I didn't have to worry about finding my way over to the precinct or finding Aaron and the team in the maze that was the precinct. I could probably find my way around the station blindfolded and I knew the first names of most of the officers. I had spent a lot of time there in my high school years and would go and see mom at work after school, forgoing the school bus for walking to the precinct and letting the desk sergeant make me a cup of tea. I probably wasn't supposed to do this but no one had ever stopped me. Was that because they had wanted to do my mom a favor or because they could see just how lonely I must have been to spend my free time sorting through unused stationary.

I pushed open the all-to-familiar precinct doors, noting how even the smell was the same. It was metal mixed with tea and something harsh, like cleaning product. Aaron was waiting for me by the front desk, exchanging some words with the desk clerk who I was sure had been one of mom's co-workers before she'd retired. Was it Alan? Arthur? No, it was Arnold. He had two dogs and was allergic to blueberries and his wife had died in a hit and run.

"Fancy seeing you around here." Arnold said with a grin, passing me a visitor's badge and a pen to sign my name on the visitor's log. "How's your mom holding up?

"She's good, thanks." I said with a nod. "How's Nina?"

"Stressed." Nina, his daughter, was a similar age to me and, if I remembered correctly, was currently climbing through the ranks of veterinary science. I'd met her once; she was nice. "But she's holding up."

"I'll speak to you later." He nodded, adjusting the wide-brimmed glasses that were falling down his long nose as she phone suddenly began to ring. It was nice to be recognised, even if it was for nothing more than being my mother's daughter and for hanging around too long at a place I wasn't supposed to be. Some things really didn't change. Arnold was still at the front desk. There was still a wet patch on the ceiling from where one of the tiles had shifted in a storm. Everything was the same.

Well, most things...

Aaron led me through the precinct towards the bullpen, several officers stopping to wave or nod their acknowledgement in my direction. Aaron didn't seem too worried which I knew had to be a good sign, no matter what his message had said. If Mom was involved, he would have told me by now.

"So, any idea what's going on?" I paused my steps for a moment, frowning at him. Wasn't I the one who was supposed to be asking him that question?

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Garcia's the one who wanted you to come in. I thought you might know why." I shook my head as Aaron began to frown himself and led me over to a large table that was scattered with files and photographs and coffee cups, the team slumped on chairs around it. "Apparently there's something that she wants you to see but won't say what it is in case it's all a big mistake."

Penelope wanted me to see something? In the police station? What the hell was going on?

There were a number of officers grouped around the table and two boards that were covered with what I presumed  
were crime scene photos, all talking in low voices with firm expressions on their faces. I recognised and knew a handful of them, nowhere near as well as I knew Arnold, but enough that when I entered they looked up and nodded at me before turning back to their files or photographs. It was slightly strange being back here without mom being by my side. It was just another reminder of the changes that had occurred in our lives over the last couple of years even if this place was almost unchanged.

I placed my handbag down on the floor and shrugged off my coat, unease skimming over me and causing the hair on my arms to stand on end. The station felt too silent, too still. There was usually noise coming from every direction, people rushing from doors that I didn't even know were there. Currently, the only noise I could hear was a low murmur of chatter, Derek clicking his pen and the thumping of my heartbeat.

This was definitely about the cop murders. And Penelope wanted to show me something.

I felt sick.

Emily was leaning over a laptop, furiously clicking before she looked up and turned the screen towards me. I folded my arms, aware that all of the officers were watching me out of the corners of their eyes. They seemed to be as curious as I was.

"Hey honey - "

"You going to tell me what's going on?" I asked with a slight smile and a raise of my brow, finding it impossible to remain so serious when Penelope was sprouting two pink rainbows from her hair bunches.

"I was getting to that part. Can you look at the crime CCTV footage?" I turned to Aaron who was standing next to me, his stance mirroring my own, and he passed me a clump of glossy, slightly-blurred, photographs.

"Got them."

"Find the one with all five of the men on it."

"Got it." My anxiety was growing with every passing second as I focused on the photograph in my hands. What was Pen expecting me to see? Was it one of mom's friends? Was it someone I knew?

"Look at the man on the far right." I felt like all of the air had been sucked from the room to leave a soulless vacuum, every ounce of everyone's attention focused on the picture that was resting in my slightly clammy hands as I smoothed over the five figures. The image was grainy, the colours blurred under the street-lights and whatever digital filters Penelope had had to process it through.

"It's not great quality - " I mused, wondering just what exactly Penelope wanted me to see. There was nothing jumping out at me, no one that I instantly recognised.

"That's the clearest I could get it."

"Well, I don't know what you - " My voice was suddenly snatched from my throat because I did recognise him. Of course I did. I would never forget that face. That was the face that I had spent eleven years of my life with. I would never not see that even, when he had gone through his peculiar phase of growing a moustache and beard and looking like he was a man who lived in a cave.

It was Clint. Clint.

Clint.


	10. Novem

I couldn't speak. Time seemed to draw to a stand-still. Words seemed meaningless.

The photograph in my hands couldn't lie. Penelope had seen it, that was why she had called me in. We both knew what was in the photograph, we both knew the figure lingering at the edge of the shot. 

It was Clint. There was no doubt about it. And yet my mind was now scurrying to fill in the blanks because I couldn't admit that he was somehow involved in this.

Behind me, I could hear Aaron explaining just exactly who Clint was to the other officers and the rest of the team but I wasn't paying attention. His words weren't sinking in. This didn't feel real; I felt as though I had just walked into a dream.

He was back in Virginia. That took a moment to digest. But not only was he back in the state, but he had managed to get himself involved with some criminal gang who enjoyed setting fire to police officers.

Great.

This wasn't real. This couldn't be real.

"Lizzy?"

"Hmm - " Aaron was watching my expression, my hands now gripping so tightly on to the photographs that my knuckles had turned white. 

"You okay?"

"I'm - " I wasn't fine. The swirling pit of nausea in my stomach was more than enough to notify me of this. My throat felt as though it was closing up, the floor torn from beneath my feet. Clint was back. He was here. He was a criminal. "I'm fine."

The words tasted bitter in my mouth.

"You know one of the suspects? This means that you're now an invaluable source of information - " I blinked back at the officer who had spoken, his words seeming empty. I didn't feel like an invaluable source of information. I felt like Clint was a shadow of someone that I had once known, something that had drifted out of my life but at the same time had never really left.

"We've managed to identify another one of the members." Dave added and I saw both him and Aaron glaring at the officer who'd spoken. The officers then began speaking, their words blurring together until, the photographs and files they were pushing around the table fading into insignificance.

I still couldn't understand. Why was Clint here? What was he doing? What had he been doing all this time?

I had identified a member of a group who were responsible for a mass murderer. I should feel at least a tiny bit of pride or relief or...something, other than the emptiness inside of me. There had to be something more to this. I refused to believe that he could have turned so drastically in the space of a few years.

Yes, he could be irresponsible and childish sometimes, and had a bit of a drug problem that he'd struggled with for a while but I couldn't see him stooping to four counts of murder. That wasn't him.

But, I hadn't seen him in a while. It was a passing two years at this point. He might have changed.

Could someone change that much?

No.

Yes.

Maybe.

Maybe he was coerced by the others? The profile of the identified member of the group was pinned to the noticeboard and, judging from his past credentials, he seemed to be able to get anybody onto his side of the path. I doubted that would exempt Clint. He had always been easily influenced by those around him. I only had to think back to the canteen in high school to know the affect that other's behavior and peer pressure could have on him. He would crack.

I gazed down at the photographs that were still in my hands, the dark figure of Clint glinting back at me from the glossy sheet. What was he doing? What was going on?  
***  
I managed to drag myself out of the daze that I had fallen into enough to be able answer all of the questions that the team and the other officers wanted me to. Some of them seemed pointless and openly presumptuous about the type of character they thought Clint was and I had to stop myself from biting their heads off. They were doing their jobs. It wasn't their fault that I was feeling strange and uncomfortable, as though I was sitting in ice.

I didn't want to treat him like a criminal, which was what I supposed he had to be considered now. I had had to reel off his full name, age, childhood, last known location and anything else that I could remember about him. I had nearly married him so I did know rather a lot of information. It was funny how much pointless information you could remember about a person when you took the time to speak. I knew how long he liked to cook his steak, how his grandmother had lived in Poland for almost all of her life, how he always wore socks to bed no matter the time of year.

I had thought that I knew about Mike too and look where that relationship had got me. Almost all of that life that I had tried to build for myself had turned out to be a lie. I didn't want Clint to be a lie. 

I was sat on a leather armchair, the seat sinking down so low that I was almost sat on the floor. There was a cup of coffee resting on the side table in front of me but I hadn't touched it. I knew that it was the same officer who had called me a 'valuable resource' with that smug look on his face that who had made me the coffee. He seemed young and far too eager and arrogant in his enthusiasm. 

I didn't have anything to do. I was picking apart the officer's behavior because I had nothing else to do. And yet, I didn't want to leave. I didn't know what I was waiting for. It wasn't as though Clint was going to suddenly turn up and replace my coffee with something that I actually liked.

"You okay?" I looked up, Aaron dropping into the seat next to me. He had removed his shirt-jacket, his shirtsleeves rolled up to this elbows. I nodded. His forearms would usually be remarkably and annoyingly distracting to me and yet, at the moment, they weren't doing anything for me.

"I just feel a bit strange. He's back, sort of. But - " I paused sharply, meeting Aaron's gaze. "Aaron. The man that I knew would not kill four people, not police officers. He was a drug prevention officer for God's sake - " I bit my lip, noting how quickly my voice had begun to rise, how quickly I could be riled up when speaking about him even though I hadn't seen him in years.

Derek was right. It had been a while.

Aaron remained silent, his fingers lightly tapping against the arm of the chair. Was he silent because he didn't know what to say? I doubted it. Almost every move Aaron made was calculated in some way, based from his knowledge of the human mind and profiling. Was he using the techniques that he'd learned on me? On our relationship?

"I thought that I was never going to see him again." I said slowly, somehow trying to piece my thoughts together. "I resigned myself to that fact when he stopped replying to my messages. But, I don't know anymore. He had a shit childhood. A really shit one. He bounced around foster homes; was a part of bad crowds; he didn't have anyone looking out for him. He just needed someone to give a shit about him for once in his life which is what I ended up doing." I paused for a moment, the truth staring at me. "Maybe a little too much."

That was what a couple of people had said to me but I hadn't been able see it at the time. I had loved him and I hadn't thought you were able to love somebody too much but I had learned that you could.

"You just loved him like you wanted to." Aaron said simply. "It wasn't your job to change him and care for Clint like you were his parent."

"I felt like it was." I said softly, looking down at my hands in my lap and causing a strand of hair to fall in front of my face. Ever since we had started dating and Clint had gradually begun to explain just why he lived with a woman he barely knew and how he'd come to receive the scar on his neck, I had felt as though it was job to protect him and care for him. He had no one else, aside from the rest of the soccer team who were hardly the best listeners when they were downing their tenth cup of beer. "He had no one." I repeated, as though this was justification. 

I hadn't done anything wrong. I had loved him. But, looking back, I knew that I had been putting more of myself into the relationship that Clint ever had.

"How are you feeling today?"

"What?"

"The whole 'feeling shit' thing?" I had been so wrapped up in my memories of the distant past that I had forgotten about a conversation I had had mere hours ago. 

"This isn't exactly helping." Aaron swallowed, his hands flexing. He looked so concerned, the lines in his face running so deep that I smiled, pushing the hair from my face and sitting a little straighter as I reached for the coffee. "But a little better."

I couldn't let Clint consume my every waking moment. He clearly hadn't thought too much about me over the last two years considering he'd stopped visiting the house and answering my messages. I couldn't let him disrupt Aaron and the case and everything else that was occurring around me.

I couldn't.  
***  
Somehow, I just couldn't leave. I needed to know just how Clint was involved, where he was now, what he was doing. I'd texted Aimee twice whilst sifting through a pile of CCTV photographs. I knew that I couldn't stay forever but I wanted to make every second count.

Penelope had been able to pull together an extraordinary amount of CCTV footage from the three cameras the team had located and even though there was no dead body in the picture and none of the people in it were carrying a weapon, the officers were considering it as seriously as a signed confession.

Most of the pictures were of similar quality to the one I had initially used to identify Clint and there wasn't much else to see other than shadows and grainy colours. I barely noticed the other four suspects as I tracked Clint's movements through the photographs, watching his body language and his positioning at all times. Did he seem to be friends with the other members of the group or was he being forced? Was he an active participant or a bystander?

I wasn't sat down at the table but was stood, leaning over it to look at the pictures that I had spread out in front of me. I felt too constricted if I was sitting. I needed to move around and think and work off the nervous energy that had been building inside of me ever since I had first spoken Clint's name.

I looked up at a murmur of voices, spotting a pair of detectives that I didn't recognise enter the room before I turned back to the photographs. I wasn't sure where Aaron and the rest of the team had gone; I had been so wrapped up in examining the photographs that I hadn't noticed.

The two detectives were lingering at the outskirts of the room and I was doing my best to ignore them. That was difficult, however, when I could hear them mumbling under their breath about how I was bending over the table.

I was bending over the table because I was trying to find clues to the location of my ex-fiancée, not so they could stare at my ass. Obviously, they didn't understand this message.

"I heard she's a doctor, not a cop, but it looks like she's good at something - " I swallowed thickly, shifting the photographs around on the surface of the table as I felt my skin begin to crawl. If I didn't already feel awkward enough about this whole scenario, that comment really put the cherry on top of the whole damned cake.

I straightened up, folding my arms across my chest and turning to speak with them but my words were futile. Aaron was lingering in the doorway, a cup of tea in one hand a file in the other, glaring daggers at the detectives and shooing them away from the table with a barked order. I didn't recognise the detectives so they hadn't been operating when Mom had worked here. It seemed that some things had changed, after all. 

"They need watch their mouths." I raised an eyebrow, giving him a blank stare as though I hadn't heard. I didn't need to drag up something else that would cause him to furrow his brows and narrow his eyes. But, I knew that this gesture was futile. He knew that I had heard. He could read it on my face.

"You've already got so much crap on your plate, you don't need to worry about me too you know. I can handle a couple of asshole detectives."

"You shouldn't have to." He said sharply, bringing the cup to his lips and looking over at the two evidence boards. I could see the tension running down his shoulders and through his back. Everyone in the building - aside from those two asshole detectives - looked the same. Tense, on-edge, like a coiled spring ready to snap.

"No, I shouldn't. But I think a scary FBI agent will help to readdress the balance." I raised an eyebrow at him, taking the file from his hand so I could intertwine his fingers with my own. I needed to push Clint from my mind. I needed to warm the cold, empty feeling inside of me; I needed to remind myself who I was and what I was doing. 

I stretched up to press a kiss to his cheek, curling my hand around his arm. He slowly turned his head to look at me, a puzzled expression on his face as I grinned and leaned forwards to brush my nose against his. 

My eyes shot towards the door at the sound of exaggerated coughing as the rest of the BAU team filed into the room along with handful of detectives, Dave shooting the pair of us an amused glance. Aaron had told me many times that Dave seemed to be the biggest supporter of our relationship. He and Penelope would have to fight it out for the top spot.

"Garcia ran Clint's face through all the databases she has access to in case he was using a fake name and - " Emily broke off, grimacing slightly as she ran a hand through her fringe.

"Well, it's not great." Dave finished. I didn't know what I had been expecting it to be, as though he'd left home and become an accountant rather than starting his new criminal lifestyle.

"There's credit card fraud, carjacking, three counts of mail fraud, that's just what he's been charged with." Spencer listed off from the file Aaron had brought in and my heart began to sink even further.

At least it wasn't for being a suicide-bomber. Or high-treason.

"He's moved across three states but apart from that we don't have a lot to go on." Derek continued and one word in particular lodged in my mind. Mail Fraud. That was the kind of thing Dad was involved with.

"What if he's using a different name?" JJ added. Mail fraud. Mail fraud.

"Should I ring my Dad? He works for Postal Inspection. He might be able to find out if he's using a fake name."

"You sure he's not just going to let him off because it's her ex?" I narrowed my eyes on the detective that had spoken, instantly realising that it was in fact one of the detectives who had been staring at my ass earlier. I forced myself to smile at him, resisting the urge to punch him.

"No, he's an Assistant Deputy. Bureaucracy is above him."


	11. Decem

_Another reflecting chapter because Lizzy is doing a lot of reflecting lately. Her entire life is basically folding in on itself and regurgitating itself back out so we'll give her a break..._

The book in my hand was pointless. I had grabbed it from the shelf knowing that it would be a miracle if I even read a page. The kids were in bed, the house was relatively tidy, it was the perfect time for me to get some reading done. And yet I couldn't, because of course I fucking couldn't.

My mind felt like it was trapped in a maze. I was constantly wandering, constantly on the move, never sitting still.

I felt like my life over the last seven hours had been that of a dream. I was in a maze that was stuck inside a dream. Nothing that was going on felt like it was real or that it was happening to me. The feelings that I were having couldn't possibly be going on inside of my head.

My ex-fiancée couldn't possibly be back and embroiled in a possible mass murder. He couldn't be involved in it. He was still the jock from the soccer team, with his stupidly-fluffy fringe and the gap in his front teeth. I was still the girl he had to drag to games that none of his friends had really ever heard of.

For how long had I been living like I was still in the past? That was the thing about the past, though. It never felt like it had passed. It always felt like the present before you realised just how long it had been since that moment.

It had taken me a while to accept the fact that he was probably never going to be part of our lives again, even after he'd promised the girls that just because he wasn't living in the house anymore, and him and I didn't had been fighting almost every day, it didn't mean he was going to stop seeing them.

He had. He'd chosen his friends that all flopped between rehab and the hospital and his drugs over us.

Of course, that wasn't how it actually worked because addiction was a disease and I knew that. I'd been to countless seminars that wanted to scientifically prove that fact - that it wasn't a choice but a blip in a brain cell.

But it hadn't just been the drugs. I would have been able to live with that because, God knows, I had experienced enough of that back in Oklahoma. It had been his whole attitude. It had been how because of his friends - I called them friends because it sounded better than calling them a gang or a pack or any of the terms that I actually wanted to use - he had become different. He became more aggressive, less reliable, not the funny, caring guy that I had known for so many years.

Had he still been that guy deep down? Beneath the people he hung out with and the concoction of chemicals that he ingested or injected into himself? He had to have been, right? Was it my fault for not digging a little deeper and yanking him back out?

I thought about that a lot. Even now.

Even now, I felt like I had let him down because I hadn't stuck with him. I knew that that was ridiculous. I remembered the countless times that Mom had said you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. I had seen the statistics on how many women stayed with their partners when they were going through something compared to men, no matter how abusive and damaging that relationship was. I knew it all. I had reminded myself of it all a thousand times.

But I'd never stopped thinking that I could have done more. That I should have done more. If I had, maybe he wouldn't have got into the situation that he had. If I had, would he have managed to get himself wrapped up in a quadruple murder?

I just hoped - and prayed - that wherever he was he was safe and he was okay and this whole thing was just a misunderstanding. Even though, he was the one who had drifted apart and hadn't stayed in touch. I still hoped that he was okay.

God, this was all so messed up.

Because I was the one who was feeling worse off, not him. I felt like I hadn't done enough. That it was my fault.

It was my fault.

Fault. Mine.

"Hey. You alright?" Aaron had gone off to have a shower or something. I couldn't remember. Now he was standing in the doorway, dressed in a jumper and loose sweatpants as I lay curled up on the sofa. I could feel the tears building up in my eyes, remembering the van that I had seen parked in the driveway that Clint had piled his belongings into. I hadn't known the driver, even though I had asked Clint his name and he'd ignored me. Lola had asked me what was happening. Lexi had been screaming, banging her tiny fists against the sofa.

I had watched the van drive away. Lola had aske me whether I was going away, too. I had told her no, given Lexi a bottle of juice that I knew would quieten her, stepped into the hallway and cried.

I nodded and smiled. "I'm good."

A moment later, Aaron was sat next to her with his arms gently curled around me. I nestled into his warmth as he rested his chin lightly on my head. This was what I missed the most when he was away in some distant state, some distant city, chasing killers.

His warmth. The way he could make me feel safe. Not that I needed him to feel safe but it was nice to have another adult in the house to talk to. To have someone to shoulder some of the burden.

I wasn't going to cry. Aaron leaned forward to tuck some of my hair behind my ear. I wasn't going to cry. Nothing had even happened. There wasn't anything for me to cry about.

"You sure?"

"Yep." Damn his big, puppy-dog eyes and that expression he wore that wasn't a smile but had the meaning of a smile. Damn his ability to press me and push me when I wanted to shut down like a clam. We both did it to the other and then hated when the mirror was turned back on ourselves. Maybe that was why we got on so well, because we were so similar in that respect.

Proud. Stubborn. Reckless, sometimes. They weren't positive qualities.

For God's sake.

Yes, I wanted to talk some stuff through with him because it was draining otherwise but I didn't want to feel so weak. I didn't want to feel so utterly weak, stupid and powerless and look like a crybaby while I was speaking. Aaron managed to keep it together. The entire BAU team did.

And, of course, my eyes were welling up. Fuck Clint for making me like this. Fuck me for not being able to keep my shit together.

"I told myself I wasn't going to cry." I sniffled, feeling Aaron's arms tighten around me as my eyes grew blurry with tears.

"It's okay." I rubbed the tears away with my hands, casting my gaze towards the floor. Was I embarrassed about Aaron seeing me cry? The answer made me want to cry even more as my entire body flushed.

Yes. Yes I was.

"I hates it." I murmured, wiping the second wave of tears from my cheeks. "I hate feeling so weak, like I can't control anything that's going on. It feels like the ground's crumbling away at my feet and - " I could remembers the night of our first date as though it had happened yesterday, when we had been walking back from the restaurant and he had profiled me.

I had a deep and desperate need to perfect. It was primal. If I was anything less then that automatically felt like I was a failure and I wasn't worth -

"I spent so long trying to get over him leaving and now he's back. I don't know what to do or what to think."

"He's not back in your lives." Aaron said slowly, stroking my back in a comforting rhythm that I knew would send me to sleep on any other day. "Just because he's back in the state doesn't mean anything's changed."

"Yes, it does." I said firmly, my voice hoarse as I attempted to clear it. "When he just had an addiction that was one thing. Now, he's a criminal and a murderer and - " My throat dried up.

"You didn't cause him to be that way." Because that was what I was afraid of, wasn't it? That was what was sticking inside my head. That was what my immeasurable pride couldn't get over.

"I could have done more to stop it. I could have helped him, supported him or - "

"Lizzy."

"What?" I snapped.

"You didn't know. You were doing the best thing for her children, for your own happiness. You're allowed to be happy. You shouldn't have had to shoulder all his pain like his parent. You're supposed to be equals in a relationship but you were taking on all of his pain so he didn't have to."

Aaron was staring at me, his words painfully true. I didn't know how to react. I shrugged, smirking a little.

"That's just me, though isn't? I have a desire to try and control everything even when I know it's impossible."

"Clint is not your responsibility. His actions are not yours. He is not your fault."

I repeated this in my head like a mantra, like a prayer.

He was not my fault. He was not my fault. He was not my fault.


	12. Undecim

_There's always a chance for Lizzy to show off her skills..._

The next day, I was rushed off my feet the entire day which I knew was bound to happen. Any day that gave me even the slightest of breaks was bound to be followed by a day where I could barely stop to breathe. I had so many patients to get to that I didn't really have any time to be worrying about Clint or to be wondering how Hannah made her hair so glossy and shiny. It was a good thing, really. I would much rather be thinking about someone's blood pressure than where Clint was right now. I needed to be thinking about the amount of weight someone had put on in their first trimester rather than if the murders were simply an isolated incident or whether there would be more.

There'd better not be more...

I somehow managed to pick the kids up from school - I had pulled into the car park just as Jack was walking down the path - before dropping them off at my parents because I was needed down at the precinct again.

Well, needed seemed to be a strong word.

Aaron was insisting that I didn't need to come in even after Spencer had texted me to say that my presence would be greatly appreciated and, it seemed, that all the detectives and officers wanted me there because of how much I knew and could help. I did want to help, once I managed to disconnect from the fact that this was Clint my ex-fiancée and not just a regular case.

Aaron had said that he didn't want me to get any more stressed than I already was, which was a true statement. But just because I didn't think that Clint was involved in the murder - sometimes when I thought about it I was certain and then other times I was less sure - it didn't mean that the people he had managed to get mixed up with weren't. They seem to be a pretty dangerous and volatile group and I wasn't going to have somebody else die because thinking about her ex-fiancée as a criminal was making me feel uneasy.

I had insisted that I was fine and that was that. I had to make myself fine and show that I could look after herself. I was kind of praying that the idiot detectives stayed out of my way today because I really was not in the mood to be dealing with their bullshit and would probably go off the rails at them, taking time away from what we actually needed to focus on was the case.

I was adverse to having a quick word with them beside the coffee machine, however.

***

I held the precinct door open for a group of people leaving the building, bundled in coats despite the sunny weather. They didn't look at me as they passed but I didn't have time to press them for a comment. The traffic had been worse than I'd expected and I'd told Aaron I would be arriving more than twenty minutes ago.

It wasn't Arnold at the front desk this time, but Cynthia who I was sure had served on Mom's unit at some point. She waved me through with a smile as I started searching the room for sight of the BAU. I had only been back for two days and they officers were back to recognizing my face, as though it had been no time at all since Mom had left.

I hadn't told Mom about my involvement in the case yet because I was still struggling to get my head around it herself and I wasn't sure how to go about verbalizing what was going on. I also knew that she'd immediately start to panic that I was going to die and that wouldn't be helpful for anyone.

At least I didn't have to with Aaron because he knew exactly what was going on because he was right in the middle of it. This wasn't always a good thing but I figured that it was something I would have lost my mind without in this case.

I caught sight of the team stationed in the same area they were yesterday and immediately quickened my pace, passing by the first couple of interview rooms that all appeared empty. It seemed they hadn't had a breakthrough just yet.

"Sorry I'm so late - " I apologised, taking a glance at my watch.

"Don't worry about it." Dave insisted with a smile as he approached me but my eyes instantly narrowed as I spotted the pair of detectives from yesterday approach the table with a coffee in each hand. I rolled my eyes, noting that Aaron had also spotted them. "Oh look, it's tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber."

It seemed to be a well-known fact that they weren't the most professional officers in the precinct. That made me feel a tad better, knowing it wasn't just me that they had decided to target.

The detectives immediately began to gesture me over to one of the boards filled with photographs, bombarding me with questions, but before I could speak Aaron was leading me back over to one of the tables that was strewn with paper and photographs. I frowned at him, noting his hand that was resting in the crook of my arm.

"What's going on?"

"I don't like them."

"What?"

"They're very unprofessional." Was he thinking back to yesterday? Or had something else happened today? Had I managed to come up in conversation again? Whatever the reason, it seemed that they weren't the only ones being unprofessional. Aaron had one arm tightly slung around my waist and I smirked.

"Are you jealous?"

"What?" Aaron furrowed his brows. "No, I'm not jealous. Why would I be jealous of two detectives who can't do their jobs properly and from the looks of it can't even tie a tie - "

"Because you're being awfully territorial right now. I'm surprised you're not digging a hole and burring something."

"Sorry." He instantly loosened his grip on my waist and I quickly leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek, knowing that the team were stood about five feet away and were probably staring. Kissing I could manage. It was just...other stuff that made my skin crawl. "They're just getting on my nerves - "

"It's okay. You're kind of sexy when you're jealous."

"I'm not jealous." Aaron said firmly, a smirk playing on his lips. "And if we really want to talk about jealousy then we need to talk about Fiona from the park don't we?" I rolled my eyes and looked down towards the table of photographs. I could feel Aaron's eyes on me and I shrugged.

So he had been able to see what was going on. Good.

"I've no idea what you're talking about because I'm clearly the professional in this scenario." Aaron scoffed and I could have sworn he murmured something under his breath. "Have you made any progress with the case?"

"Yes, actually." My eyes widened. They had? What? Had they found something out about Clint? "After hours and hours of going through CCTV footage - "

"Someone's had a riveting day." I interrupted, smiling briefly. Whenever I was feeling anxious, I either completely shut down or started talking at a hundred miles a minute with quips that didn't even make sense. At the moment, my mood seemed to be that of the latter.

"We managed to track down a possible witness."

"Really? To the fire?" That wasn't just progress, that was the brink of a breakthrough. Who was the witness? Could he describe any of the figures he had seen? Had he seen Clint?

"Kind of. He sold them some chips at a gas stop, before finishing his shift and tailing them for about a mile before they diverted."

That was nothing to do with the fire. He was such a fibber. But that didn't matter. They actually had someone who could provide insight into what had happened. They were one step closer to finding out just how dirty Clint's hands were in all of this.

What did I want the answer to be? Did I want him to be involved? Did I want him to be the victim? Just thinking about it made me feel partly sick.

"Where's this witness now?"

"He's waiting in the interview room. We're just going over how to proceed, how much information we should tell him - "

"Which interview room?" I said with a slight frown.

"Room 1. Why?"

"When I walked past before they all looked empty." Aaron stopped skimming through the photographs on the table and met my gaze. His eyes were narrow, the lines in his face deepening.

"You're sure?" I hesitated. Was I sure? Sure about what? They had looked empty when I had passed but I knew that I could have missed someone. Could I? "Lets check." I stormed after Aaron, casting a look over my shoulder. Everyone else was engaged in something else to do with the case, even our two favorite detectives or at least it seemed that way. We reached the door of the interview room and Aaron pushed it open, my eyes narrow.

I sprung forwards, dropping to my knees and reaching for the plastic gloves that I always knew were in my pockets.

The man, the man who they had identified as perhaps the only witness, was lying on the floor and clutching at his stomach as blood seeped through his hands. Shit. Shit.

"We need to call an ambulance - " I shouted, not looking up to see if Aaron was still hovering by the doorway or not. I could hear voices shouting, the thudding of running footsteps as I pulled the plastic gloves onto my hands.

Shit. He'd lost a fair bit of blood in what I guessed was a short space of time. His eyes were open, his pupils dilated and his breathing seemed...okay, all things considered. It definitely wasn't normal to be gasping in pain but it could be much worse. Judging from the blood staining the carpet, he tried to crawl over the door but collapsed onto his back instead.

The man wasn't old. Twenty-three at the latest. I gently tried to peel his hands away from the wound, his fingers tightly clamped around his stomach, my hands quickly becoming coated in blood. The wound didn't look deep, but it was hard to tell with the scarred skin and blood that was clotting around the edges.

"We've called 911 - " It was Aaron, hovering by the doorway, another cop stood beside him who looked as though he was going to be sick.

"Our first-aider has already gone home for the day."

"You don't need one - " Aaron's total confidence made me move a little more assuredly as I quickly examined the wound in case any remnants of what he'd been stabbed with had been left behind. At this point, I was presuming some sort of knife but it was lmost impossible to tell.

"Sit down." I said sternly, meeting Aaron's eyes for the briefest of moments as I tugged at the fabric of the man's t-shirt so that none of the fabric would be caught in the wound.

"What?"

"Just do it." I was grating my teeth in concentration and panic as Aaron hurried over to me, dropping to his knees behind the man. "I need you to rest his head on your knees and keep him elevated and keep him calm. Turn his head slightly. Talk to him."

I helped Aaron to move his body slightly to his head was resting on Aaron's knees, a hand on his forehead. All of the procedures were running through my head at a hundred miles a minute as I double-checked his breathing. It wasn't obstructed, he was conscious. I reached for his wrist and focused on the ticking hand of my watch. His heart rate was elevated but nothing I wouldn't expect.

Aaron was speaking slowly and calmly, his tone light and almost friendly as I tore a piece of the man's t-shirt to wrap around the wound. I tried to block out his voice, wanting to concentrate on just what I was doing. Ideally, I wanted a much bigger strip of fabric but his t-shirt was made of a thick, coarse material and I didn't have any scissors with me and I didn't want to waste any time in locating any. His voice was hoarse and he was slow to reply but at least he was speaking and wasn't unconscious.

My mind caught onto one of Aaron's questions as I pressed the material firmly to the wound and heard the man take a sharp intake of breath.

Had he seen who'd stabbed him?

It must have been one of the group to keep him quiet. That was the only reason I could think of. But then why hadn't they killed him?  
I tightly swallowed as the fabric was almost instantly saturated with blood. They might still kill him if the ambulance didn't hurry the fuck up.

"Honey?" My eyes shot over to Aaron where he was worriedly looking at the man's face. His eyelids are fluttering like he was having some sort of seizure. I pressed a little harder on the wound but he didn't calm.

Fuck. I needed to staunch the bleeding and it was clear that I was going to need a much bigger piece of fabric than what I had been able to pull from his t-shirt.

"For fuck's sake..." I mumbled, reaching for my shirt and tearing it over my head, the chill of the room causing me to shiver. I roughly folded my shirt and pressed it down over his wound, leaning over his chest to use as much strength as I could muster in my arms. He groaned, a deep guttural sound.

He was getting paler. I was sure his breathing was slower. Where the fuck was this ambulance?

"Can you take his pulse?" Aaron reached for his wrist as I pressed down a little more firmly, realising that a crowd of people were now clustering around the door, including some of the team are and the stupid detectives. They were probably gawping at me, the sight of me without a shirt, but I didn't give a shit right now. I had bigger things to deal with.

I looked up and caught Aaron's eye, his face strained and pale despite his calm voice. What was all this? What had Clint got himself into?


	13. Duodecim

I buttoned up the blue linen shirt that Emily had passed to me earlier, noting that other than being slightly tighter than my usual shirts it fitted pretty well. Emily had been wearing a camisole under her shirt - an idea that I was thinking of adopting myself for situations such as these - which was why she had been able to let me borrow hers. I hadn't even bothered asking JJ because there was no way that hers would have fit me, considering her small frame, and I really wasn't in the mood to be leered at more than I already had been.

If either of those detectives decided to come over to her and say anything then I was actually going to hit them and no one was going to be able to report me because I was the daughter of Officer Margaret Harmon.

I could breath a slight sigh of relief now that the man - who I now learned was called Owen - had been taken to hospital. I was feeling optimistic about his condition but I knew that things could always take a sudden turn for the worse at any moment. I didn't think the knife had got his kidney judging from how he had been breathing but it might have done and if both of them decided to shut down then it was going to be a rough night in keeping him alive, never mind getting any useful information out of him.

He had been the only witness and now he was lying half-conscious on a gurney.

"You did great in there, you know." Emily said, lingering by my side as the rest of the station began to return some element of normalcy. I shrugged and swallowed tightly. It didn't feel like I'd been great. I felt like I had been a nervous wreck. Could I have done something more?

"Hippocratic oath." I said simply. "I kind of have to be. We get emergency trauma training every six month or so. I didn't realise that it would ever come in so handy."

It was also really sad and kind of terrifying how much I'd had to use my skills over the last few months. It wasn't something that had gone unnoticed by my family either and Aimee and Joe sometimes joked that it's ever since I started hanging out with Aaron that I'd had to start donning the latex gloves more often and that was actually true. It had been since I'd been seeing more of Aaron - which had consequently led me to see all of Aaron - that my brushes with trauma and injury had increased dramatically.

Obviously, I knew that Aaron had absolutely nothing to do with Tomas, or Mike's gang or Clint deciding to get mixed up with cop killers but it was a correlation.

A correlation that was absolutely impossible to ignore by everyone it seemed.

I folded my arms as the rest of the team approached me, Aaron's hands now clean of the blood that he had somehow managed to come into contact with while helping me with Owen. I wasn't sure I even wanted to hear what they had to say. Their lead had almost been killed and they were effectively back at square one. I wasn't sure how that could be expressed any more positively than that.

"After that eventful half an hour, we're now a witness temporarily down." Dave said ruefully, rubbing his hands together. Had it only been half an hour? Every second inside that room had seemed both to drag out and speed up and I was now almost dizzy with it.

No one corrected Dave's use of temporarily but I knew that all it would take to change that was one call from the hospital and the entire investigation would have to grind to a halt. Should I have been faster? Was there something I had forgotten to do? Was he dead right now?

The group had wanted to get rid of him because of what he'd known and still might achieve that goal. How had they got in? It had to have been recently or he would have been dead by the time I'd have reached him. Had I seen anything suspicious, anything that had given me a moment to think twice?

Holy shit. 

I really was too British for my own good sometimes, wasn't I?

"It's my fault." Aaron instantly narrowed his eyes but I had tunnel-vision, unable to see anything other than what I knew. "I saw them walking out of the station when I came in. If I'd just kept my eyes open and noticed them then we would have known about them quicker. Owen might not have even been hurt. We could have them in custody by now."

"Clint wasn't there, though. I he was then you would have picked them out instantly." Derek's words didn't calm me and nor did his sincere expression. If anything, his words were just proof of how much Clint had been dominating my thoughts lately.

I should have seen them. I had combed those CCTV pictures, hadn't I? Clearly not.

"It is not your fault." Aaron said sternly. "There should be better security outside the interview rooms." This point didn't calm me either. Owen hadn't been a criminal so why would he need security? I couldn't blame what had happened on that. I could blame it on me, however.

"We're going to find them." Emily said confidently. "Every precinct in the state has the CCTV pictures. Someone is going to notice them."

I could feel the frustration bubbling under my skin. I did notice them, I held the fucking door open for them, and I didn't do anything and now a man might die. What's more, they were still out there and could be killing someone else who had information about them, someone we hadn't even identified yet.

They were prepared to kill to cover up their crimes. Who knew what else they were planning to do? No one. No one knew. Because they'd got away...

I forced a deep breath through my nose, no clue as to what the team had just said. I was feeling frustrated and like shit and shaken up by the whole man-has-been-stabbed-thing. I watched the team walk away, Aaron lingering close by me as I squeezed my eyes shut. I was tired and frustrated. I wasn't thinking clearly.

"You okay?" I nodded, attempting to flush this message through the rest of my body.

"I'm fine. What about you? You were a very good nurse, by the way." Inside my head, this comment was supposed to be funny but my voice was completely flat. 

"I'm fine."

Great. We were both fine.

Fine. My mind remembered Bride Wars, a film that I had watched a thousand times and that had got me through college when I'd wanted nothing more but to go back home. Fine wasn't a feeling. Fine was a passive state. We were passive. Tired and angry and passive.

It seemed that the pair of us were both good at trying to convince ourselves that fine was a feeling, though.

"You should probably head home." Aaron said gently. "It's getting late."

"Are you coming?"

"Not yet."

"What?" I blinked up at him, trying to read his completely blank expression. Was he sending me home? Like I was a child?

"This has showed just how dangerous these people are and I'm putting you in danger by being here. You've been really helpful and so has your dad with finding us more leads but it would probably be better off if you went home."

I stared at him. Did he honestly, honestly think that I was just going to leave? Did he really understand me so little? Or was he just hoping that I would do what he said for once?

"Really?" Aaron's stoic expression momentarily fractured as his eyes darted away and I saw him go to bite his lip. The rest of the BAU were moving around their work-station. They didn't seem to have a problem with my presence. They didn't seem to think I couldn't consider what I was doing and make an informed choice.

"Please don't make this harder than it has to be. I'm just trying to look after you, Lizzy." 

"Which one of us, who out of everyone here, has actually lived with one of the suspects? Who went to school with him? Who was his girlfriend and fiancée for 11 years?" Aaron couldn't just cast me out. I wanted to be here and I had a right to be here to try and figure out just what was going on. I wasn't going to be pushed side, no matter how severe the lines in Aaron's face were growing. I didn't care if he disapproved; he wasn't the boss of me. "And so, by default, who might be the most helpful person to be here? And who are you kicking off the team?"

The frustration was threatening to overpower me, now. Everything that I repressed, from my anger regarding the two detectives to my paranoia about Clint was bubbling barely above the surface. I felt as though I had something to prove now. That I actually could help them out and, after letting them walk right past me and stab an innocent man, I wasn't giving up on this now. I hadn't been kept awake, plagued by thoughts of Clint and burning flesh and dark shadows in the street, to allow myself to simply shrug this off.

"I'm in on this." I said firmly, after Aaron remained quiet. 

"No, you're not." I had heard him shout before, plenty of times actually but that had been nothing like this. His voice was quiet, measured, assured. I looked behind him for a moment, seeing that Spencer and Emily had spotted our exchanged and were now watching us with curious eyes.

I smiled wryly, folding my arms and trying to meet Aaron's height. It was desperate, really. But I wasn't going to let him do this. I didn't care if he thought he was protecting me. I knew what was best for myself.

"You're not actually kicking me out of here, are you?" He remained quiet, looking anywhere that wasn't my eyes. This infuriated me even more. "What am I supposed to do? Just go home and forget about all of this?" Aaron sighs again and I flexed my fingers, running a frenzied hand through my hair that I had tugged down from my bun.

I was frustrated and angry but there was something else lurking in the pit of my stomach, something that was more sad than irate.

"You don't owe Clint anything." Aaron started slowly, his measured tone breaking slightly. "You don't owe anything of them. You don't have to do this."

"I want to do this - "

"No. You're going to get hurt. Do you not care about your safety at all?" Aaron's sharp tone was like being doused in freezing cold water. I had to stop myself from leaning forward and slapping him, his words and sharp eyes still sending me reeling. How could he say something like that? I knew what he was implying, as though I somehow didn't care about myself or my kids or my job.

How could he think that? How, after everything in the case, could he possibly say something like that?

I swallowed hard. The room seemed to have turned silent, the whole BAU team now looking over at our exchange. I stepped forwards slightly, forcing myself to meet Aaron's gaze and keep it. I wasn't going to cry, no matter how I felt like a chastised child who had been humiliated in front of their class.

"Do you know, Mr. Unit Chief, that you can be a real bastard sometimes?" My voice was low, my words barely more than a whisper. I saw Aaron's eyes widen before narrowing but I didn't stay to see if he would open his mouth. I turned on my heel, slinging my handbag onto my shoulder, and stormed out of the room, my hair flapping behind me like straw in the wind.


	14. Tredecim

For once, the crime drama that was rolling across the screen seemed utterly fake. I couldn't lose myself in the mystery of the case or the personal drama of those solving it. They didn't know what it was like, not really.

They hadn't just had an argument with their boyfriend in a precinct, an investigation taking place not three feet away as to whether their ex-fiancée had turned into a psychotic, cop-killing machine. 

It always came back to Clint, didn't it? Because that was what was eating me up inside and what I had yet to tell Aaron, to tell anyone. I was ashamed and embarrassed to admit it because I knew how crazed and demented I sounded in my own head. But I felt that I was, somehow, in my damaged, deluded head, cheating on Clint. On his memory.

On his fucking memory. How fucking pathetic was that?

The kids had gone to bed without a hitch and I had torn into the cake that Mom had made that afternoon. I'd spent more than an hour at my parents after leaving the precinct, not wanting to have to be alone in an empty house. I knew that I wasn't alone - there were three small people sleeping soundly above my head - but it still felt empty. It was empty because the one person that I wanted to be there wasn't because I had fucked everything up again.

I adjusted my legs that were balancing on the edge of the coffee table, careful not to dislodge the wine class or empty cake case. I hadn't even thought about what questions my family would ask and what answers I was prepared to give. I had been startled when Aimee had commented that my shirt wasn't of the style that I would normally wear and had had to quickly smile and say I was branching out into the bright blue number I had borrowed from Emily. I deliberately hadn't used Kelly as an excuse because it wouldn't be past Aimee to call her up to check my story.

Aimee hadn't seem too convinced but Dad had jumped onto the fact that Aimee had another audition for Grease tomorrow and so did Joe and Tim. The mere mention of his name had an unparalleled impact on Aimee and it was though all her confusion about my choice of shirt disappeared. Her entire being seemed to light up and I was sure she almost started blushing. He did seem like the perfect guy on paper. He loved musicals; he was a decent guy because he was friends with Joe; he was very cute.

And yet not everything that looked right on paper was right in real life, was it? 

I'd then watched half an hour of The Lion King before Lexi had almost fallen asleep in a bowl of ice cream and I'd reasoned that it was time to leave.

Aaron still wasn't home. My cell was sat next to my wine glass and I was staring at it as though it was alive. I wasn't expecting him to reply - either because he was busy or because he was mad that I called him a bastard in front if half the precinct - but that didn't deter me. 

There had been a news report on half an hour ago about the case, hence why I had turned to one of my murder-mystery shows to try and cleanse my memory. That was probably why Aaron hadn't yet returned. There had been a series of new updates. He couldn't afford to sleep yet.

And at least this way I didn't have to have yet another conversation that I was dreading and that would probably make me start crying which I seemed to be doing a lot these days. Or maybe it just seemed to be a lot because I hardly ever cried the rest of the time. I hated it because crying made me feel weak and useless and stupid.

I knew that I should just turn the TV off and head to bed with a book but I didn't want to. I couldn't, either. Aaron didn't have a key for the front door and there was no way I could head to bead without locking the door. We were supposed to get that sorted out but with everything going on it had managed to slip down the list of priorities to something that never happened.

I couldn't move from the sofa, regardless. It was as though that news report had stunned me, glued me to the spot. They had replayed the same clips a few times over and I felt as though those clips were now stuck on repeat inside my head, churning furiously inside of me clipping bits of my flesh as it did so.

A female officer has been found less than two hours ago, covered in third degree burns and pronounced dead on site. She was still in her uniform. There was evidence of sexual assault. I had run to the sink, dry-heaving as the words pounded inside of my head.

Because Clint was involved with this group. After everything, he was a part of this. He had done this. He was complicit in the act even if he hasn't physically hurt her. He knew what his supposed friends were doing and was still out there and hadn't gone to the police to turn them in, even after they'd killed five people.

It was thought the man I had known didn't even exist anymore. He might as well not because that was how I had forced myself to get over him leaving, by pretending that he had never been in my life in the first place. It probably wasn't the healthiest approach I could have surmised but in my confused mind that was the option I had chosen. It seemed to have worked because I had managed to push him from my mind. Until now.

I still couldn't see him sinking to this level of violence and depravity. The picture just couldn't materialize in my head. Yet he had. Clearly.

I heard the latch click off and the door open behind me before quietly closing again, the rush of late night traffic breaking through my thoughts. I almost didn't want to look at him. Looking at him would make what had happened earlier, what I had said, real. At this point, I could almost pretend it was simply a fever dream.

"You could have gone up to bed." His voice was soft and quiet and yet I still winced. Here we were, back to making pointless small talk instead of our emotions because that hurt too much and we didn't like feeling weak.

"You don't have a key." I said simply, slowing adjusting my position so I could watch him drape his coat over the back of a dining chair and step out of his shoes. Would he get a beer first? Or go for a shower? That had always been Clint's method of avoiding me whenever we'd had a fight. I was pretty used to angry half-drunken shouting matches, though, because they were completely the norm back in my tiny town in Oklahoma. 

No. Aaron did neither. He ran a hand through his hair and made to sit next to me on the sofa, forcing me to scooch over and drag my blanket along with me. I still wanted to hit him - every time I replayed our conversation in my head I was filled with the same frustration - but he looked so tired, so God damn tired and drained that I just couldn't. I couldn't do that to him.

A deep swell of guilt and shame rose up in my stomach. Clint was doing this to him and that felt like me by association. He was hurting him like this and keeping him from his son.

I was doing it. I was shouting at him and feeling whatever stupid feelings I was about myself and it wasn't helping. There were bigger problems out there than my own dumb internal monologue.

I grabbed my empty wine glass and headed for the sink. Aaron had probably noticed the glass the second he had entered the room. What did he think about that? Was I acting erratically? Out of character? Was I having a mental break?

For fuck's sake. I needed to get a fucking grip.

I didn't look up when I heard soft footsteps following me into the kitchen, instead turning the hot faucet and watching the water run into the sink. I could feel his eyes fixed on me, on the glass in my hands, and felt the judgement that I was sure I was projecting onto myself but could still feel down in my bones.

"I only had one glass." I didn't know why I said it. I felt compelled to under his gaze, knowing that he was stood beside me.

"You're allowed to." A perfectly diplomatic, non-argumentative response. "You don't have to punish yourself for that."

Was that what I was doing? I thought that I had just wanted a glass of wine but Aaron saw that as a method of punishing myself. The thick silence stood between us as I reached over to turn off the water. I swallowed, looking up to catch Aaron's gaze as his flickered away from me.

Fuck Clint. Fuck this whole thing. I just - 

"I'm sorry." His words wafted over me like a breath of fresh air. I nodded, gripping the glass so tightly I was worried I would snap the neck.

"I'm sorry too." I tried to sound confident and force a smile onto my face but I forfeited my attempt the moment Aaron pulled me to him, his hands warm on my back as I wrapped my hands carefully around his neck, resting my head on his shoulder.

God, I missed him. Not even just when he was away for weeks at a time. Two hours of uncertainty at whether he hated me or not was enough to make me value just what I needed to be reminded of. He was warm like he always was, his cologne lightly clinging to his skin as I breathed him in.

"I didn't mean what I said." I murmured. "I just want you to be okay."

"Are you okay?" He pulled away from me and I nodded. The fearful expression remained on his face. He didn't believe me.

"I'm perfectly okay." I said, tickling the back of his neck with the tips of my fingers. "I'm just tired. I was more worried about you - "

"You don't need to worry about me." He said firmly. It really wasn't that easy. Surely Aaron could understand that? Was that how he felt about me?

"I can't help it." I said simply, shrugging at him and leaning forwards to rest my nose against his. "I just can't."


	15. Quattourdecim

By lunchtime the next day, I was beginning to feel considerably happier. If it wasn't the long cuddle and conversation that I'd had with Aaron on the sofa last night then it was the fact that that morning I had gone over to the maternity unit and seen two of my patients that had given birth last night, as well as their new babies, and had been sick on by one of them,

That was all part of the job. You become completely immune to it. And, besides, it was a great way of distracting my mind from the case.

I'd decided to try and consume myself in work and family and try to push everything else from my mind because I couldn't control the outcome of what would happen with Clint or the case or anything else. I could only control my own actions, no matter how much that pained me, and I had to concentrate my attention onto those things.

Or at least try to.

I had spent most of the morning between patients texting Aimee, mainly about Tim. It was his birthday next week and she was wondering if they could have a party. Tim having a party didn't concern me at all but what did was that Aimee had been hoping she could hold it at her house because it was the biggest. I wasn't entirely sure how thrilled he was going to be to have a party at his co-star's sister's house but Aimee seemed so excited that there was no way I could say no. Besides, I liked hosting parties. Parties were fun and an excuse to eat as much cake as humanly possible.

It would also give me a chance to scope Tim out properly and see if he truly liked Aimee as much as she obviously did. He was very cute and they seemed to have the same interests, which was always a bonus. Or it was most of the time. You wanted some differences between the pair of you, as well as your own life away from that person. I'd sometimes forgotten about that when I'd been dating Clint and was only realizing that now.

If my mood hadn't improved already, I was tucking into a blueberry muffin that Mom had made yesterday and sent us home with a box-full. She was currently on a random baking spree for some reason but I could definitely get on board with it, seeing as it meant we would be receiving a constant stream of baked goods and I loved anything that contained sugar. This was pretty much a biological fact now.

I crumpled my now empty cake-case into my lunch box, just as a burst of noise echoed from outside the room and down the corridor. It wasn't the sound of a distressed patient, something that we had all been trained to deal with, because I could identify that sound in my sleep but this was something else. This was angry, violent, purposeful shouting that had me pulling away from my desk and heading for the door to my office. What the hell? What was going on?

I stepped out into the corridor and immediately turned to my right, my eyes widening as the shouting and cursing continued. One man had another man pushed against the wall, their faces obscured as they struggled in each other's grip. 

Kelly was stood behind the receptionist desk, yelling at no one in particular for them to calm the fuck down. I didn't recognise either of the men, they certainly weren't employees of the hospital, and the only person who seemed to be using an amount of effort to calm the dispute was Evan, who was stood as close as I guessed was probably safe to avoid being hit himself.

"Surely there are other ways to sort this out that don't involve scaring patients, gentlemen?" Was Evan all we had until security decided to show up? No disrespect to Evan, but those were some grim odds. I stepped forwards, folding my arms, thinking just what I could say that would calm the situation.

Evan sighed next to me and pushed his glass further up the bridge of his nose, clearing his throat. "And if you don't find one of those ways very quickly then you'll both be escorted out by security." Evan raised his voice, his words seeming to momentarily stop the scuffle and I was able to see just who was currently pushed up against the wall. I sighed.

It was Sean. Sean as in Aaron's brother Sean. Because of course it was and, obviously, he began to smirk a little when he caught sight of me. He managed to wriggle out of the other man's grip, surging towards me, as Evan caught the other man around the shoulder and began to lead him - a more accurate term would have been to half-drag him - back down the corridor towards the elevators. I knew that the second the man was off the hospital premises, Evan would head straight to reception to put his details on the list of people that we need to be wary of who might be holding grudges towards patients or staff and who might come and threaten them and cause more trouble. It was insane that we even need a list but it was getting quite extensive now. 

I turned to Sean, watching him run a hand through his hair and straighten his leather jacket. He didn't look hurt, although I was sure that he would probably have some bruises by tomorrow. I didn't even want to know what they had been arguing about; knowing Sean, it could be anything, because he seemed to be that kind of person who attracted conflict like a moth to a flame.

"And what exactly are you doing here?" He shrugged.

"I had an appointment with my physiotherapist." I rolled my eyes.

"Did you hell."

"I did!" He insisted and I stared blankly at him.

"Then why the hell are you up here?" Physiotherapy was no where near the Gynecology department and he bloody well knew this.

"Because my brother gave me a mission."

"What?" I frowned. "Is Aaron now sending his brother to check up on me?"

"No." Sean said, digging his hand into his pocket. "And I'm offended that you clearly don't think I make a good messenger." What the hell was going on? There was no way Sean was here just be chance. I watched him wink at someone walking behind me, it was either Kelly or Evan and I didn't know who I wanted it to be more. Gone were the days where I thought Kelly and Sean would actually make a good couple, however, and I was willing to bet my car on the person who Evan had gone on his date with not being Sean. Sean was not his type.

I watched Sean pull something out of his pocket and hand it to me. I squinted, accepting the brightly colored piece of plastic. It was a child's watch. I raised an eyebrow.

"It's Jack's. I found it down the back of my couch last night and seeing as I don't think Aaron would love it if I showed up at the FBI, I was wondering if you could give it to him? Seeing as you're kind of living together?" 

I couldn't help myself from smiling slightly as I took in Sean's expression. Clearly, he had a lot to say about out living arrangement and most of it seemed to be teasing.

"It's not permanent." I reminded him, something that I needed to remind myself, as I folded the watch into the palm of my hand.

"Would it be so bad if it was?" I wanted to wipe that insinuating smirk off of his face as I swallowed tightly. "We've definitely not talked about that and I think that's for a time when he's not completely rushed off his feet with an murderous gang."

"Good point. One of them is your ex, right?" I subconsciously narrowed my eyes at the reference to Clint. Had Aaron mentioned it to him? 

"Yeah." I admitted, slowly nodding.

"That sucks."

"Just a little."

I still couldn't shake the feeling that Sean was somehow here to check up on me. I wasn't a child. I was okay.

"You don't need to look after me, you know?" I said softly, meeting Sean's gaze. "I can look after myself." 

"I never said you couldn't." Sean said with a smile, "but everyone needs someone looking out for them and now you've got one more. Two more if you count me. We should go out for a drink sometime - " I smirked and rolled my eyes.

"Really?"

"Really. We should. You're dating my brother, we ought to spend time together. Are you free tonight?" I shook my head.

"I've got my dance class."  
"What about next Friday?" I thought for a moment. Did I want to spend time with Sean? Yes. Was I free next Friday?

"Actually yes. My teacher's on holiday."

"Then it's a date." Sean grinned.

"A platonic date." I confirmed.

"A date where I can share amusing stories about Aaron being a hormonal teenager and trying to get girls to like him." I couldn't help it but I laughed. Laughing wasn't something I had done an awful lot of recently and I'd missed it. I had. A lot.


	16. Quindecim

I gulped down the remainder of my water, resisting the urge to pour it over my head. Sue had, mercifully, given us a five minute break from the grueling workout that she was forcing onto us and I was almost struggling to breathe. She was pushing us harder than she had done for a while but, amid the sweat and the aching in my calves and the knowledge that I would have to wash my hair before work tomorrow, I was glad. It gave me a chance to block everything else out that was currently trying to invade my head and focus purely on the, now rather sluggish, movement of my body.

Everybody always said that whenever you were feeling low and a bit shit then exercise was one of the best ways to combat that. Practically every single medical professional would give that advice; even I had on occasions. But I had always personally done my best to ignore those words because I had never been particularly fond of exercise. I had to admit, though, that there was nothing like a massive rush of endorphins and sweat to make you feel better. Even if I did now resemble something of a drowned rat. Drowned in my own sweat. Lovely.

Even when I was finishing a week where I had felt like shit for more days than I hadn't, I knew that my body was amazing for getting me through a one minute plank and all those pirouettes that Sue had barked at us without falling over. That was something that I had to feel happy for.

Right now, those endorphins were definitely working. My lungs were so busy gasping for relief as I tied my stringy hair into a ponytail that there simply wasn't room for any other feeling inside my veins, whether that was anxiety or paranoia or frustration.

Saffron collapsed onto the chair next to me, beads of sweat running down her face and black smudging around her eyes. We locked eyes for a moment as she dragged her gym bag towards her with her foot, glaring down at the water bottle that lay too far out of her reach.

"You look how I feel." Saffron gasped and I rolled my eyes, watching her groan as she reached down to grab her water. "No. Scratch that. I definitely look how I feel."

"That was insane." I confirmed, watch one of the other girls jump up from her chair and pump her arms in the air as though she hadn't just completed a forty-five minute class and had another thirty minutes to go. It just wasn't fair, sometimes. I could barely move and yet still claimed that I loved dancing. I did, just sometimes I regretted that decision.

"What's got into Sue? She training for one of her secret marathons or something?"

Because she did that sometimes. Apparently. She would push us all harder just for her benefit because it turned out she was running a marathon in forty-eight hours and wanted a last minute cardio session. That was exactly the kind of thing she'd do, though. I was pretty sure all of the hormones in her body were endorphins, judging from the amount of running she seemed to do. I only ran when I was being chased or was chasing something else like, say, a child who was trying to escape me at bath-time.

"I don't know." I shrugged. I knew that Aaron liked training for marathons too but he'd never be so sadistic that he would force me to train with him under the guise of getting me fit. That was just cruel. "But if I ever do another sit up ever again then it will be far too soon."

"If Lydia was here she wouldn't have even broken a sweat - " Saffron continued, dragging her fingers through her rust colored hair that was slick with sweat. I didn't even want to look at my own face; I could feel just how bedraggled I looked and I didn't need any confirmation. "She would still be going with the fouette turns."

"She would be doing triples." I said, more savagely than I intended. Lydia was incredible and spent at least three-quarters of her life doing something active. I guessed that was why. 

"Where is she again?"

"Seeing a client. The first half of the year is always busy for her, apparently."

"If I opened a personal training business then no one would ever go." Saffron mused, kicking her legs up onto the chair next to her and closing her eyes for a moment. "They would take one look at me and think my training method clearly wasn't effective. Then they'd find out my method is eating chips all day."

"You shouldn't beat herself up." I said, with something that I thought was a smile but couldn't be sure under the layer of sweat that was sat on my skin. "You're very fit. Your arms don't start shaking after 10 seconds of plank like mine do.

"That's only because I spend all of my time carrying six packs of beer." I snorted, wishing that I had brought a second bottle of water of me. Or maybe a dozen.

Some of the other girls were stretching on the floor but even the thought of moving another step made me want to wince. I could feel the endorphins slowly fading from my body, replacing my inability to breathe with a heavy exhaustion in all of my muscles and a faint pounding in my head.

I felt like my head had been pounding a lot lately. Stress induced headaches were definitely a thing, no matter what that latest medical journal I had read had been preaching.

"What you thinking about?" Saffron asked "Anything? Anyone in particular?" She raised an eyebrow, a smirk on her face.

"Anyone?"

"Oh, you know. Ever since you moved in with your super hot, FBI agent, dad of the year boyfriend I dare say that he's being taking up an awful lot of your time." I rolled my eyes, deliberately ignoring her gaze so that I didn't make myself blush. I could see what she was implying without even looking at her.

"Funny. And no, we've not been doing as much as I'd like..." The only reason that I felt I could talk about this with Saffron, someone who I saw on an exclusively once a week basis and wouldn't rank her in the same level of friendship as I had with Kelly or Penelope, was because on the first day that we'd met she had spent the whole hour session complaining about her then-boyfriend's complete lack of ability to make her orgasm. We'd become close very quickly.

"Then make time; stay at home rather than sweating your ass off in this place."

"It's because of work." I dismissed with a wave of my hand. "It's not because of anything else. Things are just busy for him at the moment."

Wasn't he always going to be busy? Wasn't that what Kelly always said?

"Then screw work."

"I can't screw work and neither can he." I knew that and I knew that Saffron did too but sometimes it was impossible not to think it, when we hadn't seen or spoken to each other in nearly a week because he was working somewhere with no reception or internet or time to devote to anything that wasn't the psychopath trying to kill him.

"Those pesky killers are being very inconsiderate for your sex life."

Didn't I know it. But after what had happened with the team barging into my kitchen and ruining that whole thing I didn't feel in any real particular hurry to repeat that experience. We had briefly talked about it afterwards and, aside from the teasing that Aaron knew he was going to be condemned to for life, he had seen relatively relaxed about it. I, on the other hand, had replayed the event in my mind for the entirety of the night. And the days that had followed, like this one.

"Can't you go and see him at work? Doesn't his office have blackout blinds? I'm sure I remember you telling me that."

"I can't just go into his office to have sex on his desk. Or on his couch or - "

"Why not?" You have needs too."

Because it had been bad enough being stared at in my own kitchen. I wasn't going to be able to endure the stares of people if we were caught in his own office. I wouldn't be able to cope with that much embarrassment and everyone thinking, everyone knowing that - 

"Tell that to the families of those dead cops. I think that's the more pressing matter - "

"Lizzy." Saffron turned to face me, her tone resembling that of a life coach or one of the therapists that we had linked to the hospital. "You're allowed to have pleasure, murder or no murder. You know that, right?"

"Of course I know that." My voice sounded croakier than I had realized. My throat seemed to have turned dry.  
"Then stop making excuses for spending time with him and go and get him."

That was easy for Saffron to say; she didn't have three children to look after and a full-time job where people's lives were on the line...

I really was making excuses, wasn't I? Saffron could see straight through me like I was made of glass.

"I want you to promise that you're going to do at least something mildly sexual, at least something my mother would be appalled, by in the next week. I would say twenty-four hours but we have to be realistic, obviously." I looked up into Saffron's dark eyes, the mischievous smirk playing on her lips. 

"That's not fair - "  
"You have to promise, Lizzy!"

"Fine." I couldn't make any more excuses for myself. I couldn't detach myself from him and claim I was doing some noble deed; that if he spent less time with me, he could spend more time on the case and help people. I had a right to see him and he had a right to see me. I wasn't doing a noble goal; I was making him more miserable.

"Right! Let's keep going!" Sue clapped her hands, her French braids flapping around her head and Saffron let out a slow whine, as her head dropped onto my shoulder.

"I think she's trying to kill us. You should report her to Aaron. Then you'll get to see him. There's a cupboard over there - "


	17. Sedecim

I almost stayed loitering outside my own front door, the effort it took to push open the heavy slab of wood and close it shut being nearly too much for me. I felt as though my legs were going to give in any second, the bag hanging from my shoulder hardly helping, and I was considering spending the night on the couch because I didn't think I would be able to bare the stairs. Was I really so unfit? Or had it simply been so long since I had allowed myself to give every inch to an exercise and want to feel breathless at the end of it? 

It was a little later than what time I normally got back because I had dropped Saffron off at her apartment and got stuck in some evening traffic on returning home. She normally made the journey on her bike but something was wrong with it at the moment; Saffron had tried to explain the issue to me but I had had no idea what she was talking about and she had given up. Bikes were not my strong point and most of my brain capacity had been taken up with trying to start the car before my legs seized up. I had managed, somehow, and now all I wanted to do was to lie in bed and pretend to be a log.

Aaron was lying on the sofa with a beer in one hand watching an obscure period drama that I couldn't name, having only recently discovered that he liked a Victorian epic saga. It had been very surprised at first but that feeling had soon given over to glee because we could now watch them together. It was an event I had never imagined that we would do as a couple but I couldn't complain. That was, we could the next time we got free time together and I didn't feel like I was going to fall asleep any second.

I pulled off my coat, noting how quiet the house seemed. The kids must already be in bed, something that unusually made me smile. I didn't want to have to pretend not to ache like hell all over.

"You okay?" Aaron asked, leaning over the back of the couch as the credits started to roll. "You look a bit warm."

"You're hilarious." I dead-panned, heading for the kitchen and pouring myself a large glass of water which I immediately drained. "I feel like I'm sweating inside which I know isn't even possible but - " I paused as I poured myself another glass of water, slowly gulping it down. My mouth felt like it was made of dried grass. "I'm so glad Sue's on holiday next week so I don't have to go through that shit again." Aaron grinned, shuffling over on the sofa and patting the cushion next to him. I shook my head, tugging a hand through my hair. I could only imagine the state that it was in.

"I really need a shower." I whined. He patted the cushion gain, a relaxed smile on his face, and I rolled my eyes. "I'm really sweaty." I warned, slowly approaching him. It was hard not to when he looked so casual and comforting, his skirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his tie loose.

" I don't care. I'm sure you're not as bad as when we were all were running around Miami a couple of weeks ago. It was the 3rd day of April, and was 29 degrees. Of course there was some kind of abnormal heatwave just when we had to chase a sadistic arsonist around the city."

"Poor baby." I crooned, flopping down next to him as he pulled me closer and pressed a kiss to my forehead. The couch sagged under my weight as I kicked my legs up over Aaron's lap. "I'm sure that I stink, by the way."

"You always smell like vanilla and peaches to me." I raised an eyebrow. That was a complete and utter lie; those were the two scents that I currently smelt the least of. Try human sweat and gasoline. That was more accurate.

"That's only when I've washed my hair." I murmured, snuggling into his warmth as he slid one hand up my back.

"I can always smell it on you."

"I think you need to get your nose checked out." I turned to look at him, relishing in the way his hands were running over my body and the gentle expression on his face.

"Maybe you can book me an appointment. Then I could see you at work."

"So that's what it is!" I giggled. "You're using me and my job to fulfil your kink!" Aaron rolled his eyes and I giggled again. "We already know that you like coming checking up on me at work." Aaron furrowed his brows. "The whole Sean debacle?"

"I did not send him."

"You so did." I knew that Sean would have messaged Aaron about seeing me, whether Aaron really had sent him or not. 

"Honestly, I didn't. It was Sean's idea to drop Jack's watch off at the hospital, not mine. He only messaged me about it. I can't be to blame for my little brother's stupid actions - "

"You sure about that?"

"Which part?"

"You're deflecting the question. And the bit about sending Sean to check up on me - "

"Yes." I held his gaze for a moment, quickly losing the intensity that I was trying to achieve because that was just what happened whenever I looked into his eyes. It wasn't my fault that they were such a gorgeous shade.

"Fine." My words were mumbled as Aaron squeezed his arm around my middle. It wasn't that I was mad at him either way - I knew that he was looking out for me and I would have behaved similarly if we were in the opposite position but it was the idea as a whole that the people in my life felt like they needed to keep a watch on me now. That all things considered, I needed a surveillance team.

Aaron leaned forward to kiss me and I pulled away at the last moment, raising an eyebrow at him. "I'm sure that I'm going to taste of sweat - "

"You think too much." He murmured, pressing his lips to mine as I gripped onto his shoulders. The kiss was long and deep and all consuming, temporarily numbing my mind as his warm lips devoured mine. He was so good at kissing that it was insane. Some would consider it a problem how easily he could numb me. I didn't see it that way.

I broke away, my breathing shallow as I pressed my forehead against his. He was doing the sexy nose thing where the bridge of his nose brushed up against mine and his breath was kissing my face and all I could feel was him.

"Sorry that I've been spending so much time at work lately." I took a deep breath, focusing on his words, a feeling of guilt beginning to flow through me.

That's what this was about. - the kissing and the cuddles - he was trying to make it up to me. Trying to make up for being at work so often.

"You don't have to be sorry. I get it." I ran a hand through his hair. If anything, I should be the one apologising for behaving like such a nutcase over the last week or so.

"You get it because you're amazing but most people wouldn't." I leaned back a little, taking in his whole expression. If I allowed myself to look past just how handsome he was, there was a sadness in his expression that made my heart clench. "And - "

"And you feel guilty about it." He nodded slowly. "You're the one always picking the kids up and taking them to school and having some kind of work schedule going on."

"And you're the one making the world a better, safer place for people to live in." I finished, smiling. "I think you should cut yourself some slack."

"I just. I know that I'm a lot." He sighed. I instantly leaned forward, lightly brushing a finger over his lips.

"You can stop right there." I said firmly, using what I knew Aimee would refer to as my 'Mom voice.' "You're not a lot and you shouldn't feel guilty. You're amazing. You're an amazing leader and agent and father to a son who adores you. There are also two little girls who are very quickly becoming obsessed with your enchiladas." Aaron smirked, his face relaxing slightly as my hand slid down to cup his face.

"What would you say if I said those enchiladas were Sean's recipe?"

"I'd say that my world famous cookies and a recipe that I took from my grandma. They're perhaps the best memory that I have of her but - " I stopped speaking. I didn't want to ruin this, this moment that we were having, by launching into another story about my childhood and the authoritarian grip that she had controlled us with.

I leaned forwards, Aaron's lips meeting me half way as my hands instantly dove into his hair and his arms reached round to grip around my ribs. His torso was pushing me into the cushions, his lips burning at my skin as they moved to my neck, my jaw, my breath growing ragged as a moan left my lips.

I wanted this. I wanted him. But I was so conscious of the sweat coating my hair and sticking to my skin that I couldn't fully allow myself to give into his touch. He wouldn't want a sweaty lump. He wanted someone who smelled of vanilla and peaches.

"I really want to do this - " I forced myself to pull away, every instinct in my body telling me to continue. "But if I don't have a shower then I'm going to wake up in the morning unable to move."

Aaron's chest was rapidly rising and falling, mirroring my own, and if he was disappointed then he didn't show it, simply smirking and pressing a brief kiss to my lips then my nose.

He felt guilty about being at work so often. Lately, I was feeling guilty about...everything.

Everything.


	18. Septendecim

Aaron slammed onto the breaks as a car pulled out in front of us, murmuring something under his breath that I was sure he would have said much louder if the kids weren't in the back. We'd had a rather productive morning with swimming lessons and a big weekly shop because it was surprising how much extra food you needed for just two people. We'd spent half an hour trying to find a parking space and then another half an hour trying to leave the parking lot and had only just pulled onto the road that would take us home.

I didn't mind, though. I was happy that we were doing something mundane that didn't involve profiling anyone or running from a serial killer.

I was also happy with the choice that I had made last night because I had barely been able to move this morning and that had been after having a shower and heading straight to bed. I didn't even want to think about how sore I would be feeling if we'd decided to do...other, more exciting, things. 

Even if that did mean that I hadn't fulfilled my promise to Saffron yet. Did subconsciously imagining us doing it count because I'd done a hell of a lot of that when Aaron had been in another state and I'd been feeling lonely? We hadn't exactly gone through the logistical details of my promise but I was willing to bet that that imagining it wouldn't count in her eyes.

Aaron was taking the morning off, or rather he was waiting for a call to say that they'd found something before heading in. Apparently, at the moment it was all trawling through empty tips and case files from the dead cops past to see if there were any criminals that all of them had dealt with and might have a grudge against them. They were hoping that these criminals might turn out to be the other members of the gang and that identifying them would give them the all important clues that they needed to find them.

I knew that I wasn't the only one being tormented by the case; my dad had been texting me non-stop about the files he was sifting through to try and find a name of any mail fraudsters in the database who would match the profile of one of the gang members. So far, all the work had led to nothing aside from a litany of addresses which bore no end result other than more unexplained leads.

It wasn't looking particularly promising and every day that went by without an arrest, the more frenzied the media became. The severity of the situation was clearly growing and so was Aaron's determination in making a breakthrough. There had been no more deaths, which I knew was a huge positive and a surprising feat, but another crime might have been able to provide the BAU with more answers to their questions.

At the moment, the only answer they had was a witness who had been stabbed and was only recently sitting up in a hospital bed and telling everything that he saw. I was relieved that he was okay and that my limited first aid procedure seemed to have worked but none of his information sounded to be particularly imminent to the case.

5 cops were dead and no one had an awful lot to show for it. I knew that Aaron was annoyed - it was easy to read, not in his expression, but in his frame and his posture. Despite this, he was doing a pretty good job of covering it up.

Or rather, he was sitting in stoic silence and glaring off into space while clutching the steering wheel a little too tightly for it to be comfortable. I didn't know what to say because nothing I could say would hand him the piece of evidence that he needed to crack the case wide open. Instead, I was doing the top mom thing of not having a clue what the kids were going on about but nodding and smiling and pretending that I did.

That was what I did more often than not during work meetings and that seemed to turn out alright. Or maybe everyone knew that I tended to zone out last thing on a Friday afternoon and had just learned to accept it.

"Mom are you listening?" Lola repeated, her voice cutting through my thoughts. I turned my head to look at Aaron's expression, his mouth flickering slightly as he turned a corner.

"Yes, I'm listening sweetie. Go on - " Aaron slammed on the breaks again as we pulled up in front of some traffic lights. In front of us was a long line of stationary traffic, weaving through the streets and disappearing somewhere round the corner. Great. What should have been a ten minute drive seemed to have turned into a half an hour task.

My cell buzzed in my lap as Aaron sighed and starting tapping his fingertips against the steering wheel. I smirked, seeing that it was a text from Joe and judging from the repeated sad face emojis he wasn't having a very good time.

im considering pushing A down the fake stairs, she and Tim keep staring at each other

but then he'd have an excuse to help her around on her crutches

that would be counterproductive

but I reeeeeeealy want to 😒😒

It's a hard life xx

I know ☹️

rip joe, gone too soon from this world, killed by excessive pda and dreamy looks that aren't at him

I smirked as the car lurched into motion again, stuttering forward a few paces before stopping again. At least we had made it onto the high-street and there were things to look at, rather than just deserted parking lots. I crossed my legs over, pulling my cardigan further around my shoulders. Over the last couple of weeks the weather had begun to heat up and I realized just how vastly I was lacking in summer clothes.

Not that the temperatures here ever reached the heights of what they did in Oklahoma, nor were they ever as extreme, but it got hot enough that I couldn't live in cardigans which was what I did for the rest of the year. Summer dressing wasn't my favourite, though, because I'd never felt wholly comfortable in shorts or a bikini and finding clothes that I actually liked and would be able to keep me cool was - 

I looked up, my eyes focusing onto the sidewalk, and I felt like I'd been punched, hard, in the stomach. My throat was closing up, the shock rendering me breathless as the car slowly moved along.

Clint. It was Clint, looking exactly the same as he had done that last time I'd seen him, casually walking up the street, looking into shop-windows, checking something on his phone. His green waterproof jacket was new, I'd never seen that before, and he was looking a little slimmer but he was exactly the same.

He was five meters away from me, the kids in the back of the car, and I couldn't breathe. Shit.

"Shit."

"Lizzy?" A warm had wrapped around my wrist, gently pulling me towards them. "Honey?"  
"It's him." My words were a whisper, lost in the rumble of engines and splutters of exhausts, but I saw Aaron follow my eyeline and focus on the object that had captured my attention. He quickly pulled out his cell and sent a message, no doubt altering whoever he needed to that he had located a member of the group.

I watched Clint step to the side and allow an elderly man to pass by him, stroking his dog as he did so. My mouth had gone utterly dry. I didn't know what to do. He was there, right there.

He was killer, dressed in converse and a stupid baseball cap wit that wide grin on his face.

He was Clint.

The kids hadn't stopped talking in the back and this made me relax slightly; they hadn't seen him and even if they did, I didn't know whether the girls would even recognise or realise it was him. Was I severely doubting their intelligence by thinking that? He was their father after all.

"I need to follow him." Aaron murmured, one hand on the steering wheel and the other clutching the door handle. His face had turned grave, serious. He was in work mode now, every muscle in his body switched to team leader and FBI-agent. "I don't know how long the team and the police are going to be." I knew this, I could guess it.

At least we were stuck in stand-still traffic. At least he didn't have to chase Clint across a bustling highway.

Clint the murderer.

Clint, who would always make me breakfast in bed on the weekends and run me baths when I came home late from work.

"I know."

"I'm sorry." I shrugged. What could he do? I climbed over into the driving seat as Aaron climbed out of the car, the chatter in the back seat instantly stopping. I didn't want to turn around and meet their eyes; I didn't want to have to give the girls a straight answer as to what was going on.

"Where are you going, Dad?"

"Sorry buddy, something's come up with work." Aaron smiled reassuringly, that gentle expression he always wore when he was talking to the kids. Or when he was kissing me and we were alone and I could allow myself to give up fully into his touch. "We think that one of the bad men is over there."

I didn't remember Dad having to leave family trips out to chase criminals down the street. Then again, he had worked in Postal Inspection in relatively rural Oklahoma. Things had been different there.

"Drive safely. I'll call you later." He leant down, quickly kissing me on the top of my head before stepping out and shutting the door. I watched him disappear between the cars, his steps wide and purposeful. 

He was going after Clint. I sighed, pushing my foot down on the accelerator. So much for not thinking about him.


	19. Duodeviginti

I leaned my head against the window frame, my dry lips bitten to shreds by my gnawing teeth. I could hear the kids laughing upstairs, playing whatever game had thankfully had them occupied for the last hour. I didn't particularly want them to see me behaving like a maniac. They'd ask me what was going on and what was wrong; I didn't know whether I'd be able to give them a coherent answer.

I didn't really know what was going on, either. The only thing that I knew was that I'd stopped believing in coincidences when I was a child and I wasn't going to revert back now.

The only thing that I could feel at the moment was fear and uncertainty. 

The hounds are circling and I didn't know what to do. How was I supposed to protect the kids? Well, I knew how because there was a whole variety of sharp knives carefully organized in the kitchen drawers but that wasn't what I meant.

About forty-five minutes ago - I wasn't sure of the exact time - I had seen someone pass the window that I knew, deep in my bones, that I recognised. It had taken me a moment to put the pieces together in my head but now I was certain. It was one of the gang members that I had seen at the police station, the one who had inclined their head slightly in my direction when I had opened the door. I had only captured the briefest glance of his face but I had known, the second I had seen him walking across the street, that it was him.

And he'd been loitering around ever since.

I wasn't sure about his name or identity - and neither were the FBI from the sound of it - but it was him. I was certain.

His presence and behavior was slightly confusing however because if he was looking for me and he knew enough about me to know what street I lived on then surely he would know my house number? He didn't even seem to be specifically looking for me, just loitering on the pavement and walking up and down and checking his phone at regular intervals.

Like he was scoping the place out before staging a heist.

I had locked all the doors and windows and hasn't moved from the window seat since, regardless of the finished load of laundry that was sitting in the washing machine.

My cell was gripped in my hand and it had remained blank, aside from a few more sporadic texts from Joe moaning about Aimee and Tim. That meant that Aaron was still out there somewhere chasing Clint. Had they caught him? Was he on the run? Or was he back at the precinct right now confessing everything and giving them every name and fact they needed to get them into prison? I didn't know which option I wanted more.

While they were out doing that, one of the gang members had found their way into my street and was slowly surveying every bush and paving stone. He was tall, dirty blonde, brown eyes, dressed in a standard t-shirt and jeans. He looked utterly normal and commonplace and that was what was most unsettling. I might have conjured the gang in my head to be some sort of villainous sect, manipulators and crime-lords capable of brain-washing the man I had loved into a hardened criminal.

But the man currently stood across the street, swiping across his phone as though playing Candy Crush, seemed to be completely normal.

Seeing Clint had felt as though I was stuck in some sort of dream because it hadn't seemed real. He hadn't seemed real.

He had been right there in front of me after all this fucking time. It hadn't been because he'd wanted to see the girls and was sorry for dropping out of their lives. It wasn't because he'd wanted to see me. It was because he was going around killing cops and torturing them. Clint. My Clint, even though he'd stopped being my Clint a long time ago.

I looked over at the knife that was sitting on top of the island. I'd been slicing bread when I'd spotted him in the window and the knife was still out, the loaf untouched. At least it was there if I needed it.

Because if there was nothing else my parents taught me it was to always be vigilant. That's what having a cop for a mom and a FBI agent for a dad did to a person as well as growing up in Oklahoma where every single household had a gun and weren't afraid to use them.

My heart rate was beginning to climb. I could feel the pain building my chest with each breath that I forced into my lungs. I couldn't see him at the moment; he was in the middle of one of his laps of the street was somewhere at the other end. Every single time he walked past the house I stood up so that my face wasn't as visible through the window and then sat down again.

If this really was his way of trying to find me then I wasn't going to make it easier for him. I still didn't make sense, though. If he knew my street then surely he would know my house number? Where would he be able to find out my street but not my house number? Who was his source?

I had a long list of chores that I had wanted to complete today but moving from my spot was out of the question. What if he broke into the house and I didn't know? I had to stay here and watch him. When he finally got bored and left I would call someone.

Who? It wasn't exactly sure. What if he never left? What if he stayed wandering the street all night? What if -

There was a sudden scratching at the lock.

Oh fuck.

My heart missed a beat. My palms were growing clammy. What was I going to do? I - 

"Lizzy?" It was Aaron, followed by Emily and Derek. Thank fuck. I could feel my legs shaking as I pushed myself to my feet, forcing a smile onto my face as I approached the door.

"Sorry about this," Emily explained with an apologetic smile. "We're halting our search for a moment because we're all lagging and Morgan and I know that you always have great coffee - " I rolled my eyes slightly as Derek closed the door behind him, his dark t-shirt looking slightly stained my sweat.

"Don't worry about it." I assured, conscious of the way that Aaron seemed to be watching my face. He looked exactly the same as I had seen him this morning, with his hair just a little more disheveled. 

He knew, didn't he? He could just look at me and know. I hated it, sometimes. Really hated it.

"Everything okay?" I was clearly not okay but I almost didn't want to explain just what I had been feeling over the last hour. I almost considered nodding and saying yes.

I was ridiculous. I was stupid and ridiculous and needed to bash my head against a wall because I clearly wasn't awake. or conscious right now. I sucked in a deep breath.

"Not really." Emily's eyes widened slightly. "One of the gang members has been walking up and down the street for the best part of an hour and - "

"What? Really?" I nodded at Derek's bewilderment, swallowing the panic that was building in my gut. "Who?"

"I don't know."

"Can you describe him?" I paused for a moment.

"Tall, blonde hair, brown eyes I think - "

"Harrison Tipman." Aaron said confidently and Emily nodded. They'd identified one of the members. That had to mean something. Harrison. That was his name.

"What's he been doing?" Aaron inquired.

"Just that - walking up and down the street which makes no sense because if he was looking for me and looked enough to find the street then surely he'd know her house number as well?"

My paranoia was beginning to grow, not deflate, due to their blank stares. They didn't have the answers. They didn't know. They were clutching at straws, just like the rest of us.

I didn't even want to know if they'd found Clint. That was too much repressed emotion that I didn't want to be released. I was tired of feeling like I didn't have any control over my own body, over my own feelings.

"Why would they want to find me?" All I had were questions. Questions without answers, questions that had been circulating around my mind for days.

"Maybe they think that you'd offer them refuge and help them out?" Emily said as I folded my arms.

"I don't Clint would be that stupid in thinking I would help them. But then, only a few weeks ago I thought he was a good guy and now he's going around potentially killing people so what the hell do I know."

That's what this was. It was throwing it back in my face about how I couldn't make decisions about who to trust and I was a deluded idiot in ever loving him and maybe that revealed that I was far too arrogant for her own good but, -

"Dad?" Jack and the girls were lingering by the doorframe, grins on their faces, with Jack instantly dragging Aaron and Derek into a conversation about the soccer tournament that was currently going on at school and whether their team would win.

Harrison. I knew one of their names. That should have made me feel better but it didn't, not really. Now I just had more unanswered questions about them and myself and Clint and - 

"Hey, look at me." Emily was by my side, on of her hands holding my wrist in a firm grip. Her eyes were unyielding, confident, and I couldn't look away. "This is not on you."

"Yes it is." I said it automatically, the words leaving my throat before I could even stop them.

"No it isn't." Emily said firmly.

"I feel like it is - "

"Because you blame yourself for things that are out of your control because you were made to feel guilty for everything and manipulated when you were a child." I couldn't speak. I could barely breathe. How did she know that? I had only told Aaron that - "We're profilers. We can see patterns in your behavior and I'm telling you, both adult Lizzy and child Lizzy who is still in there somewhere, this is not on you. It is not your fault."


	20. Undeviginti

I somehow ended up at my parents' house at tea-time, once Aaron, Emily and Derek had re-started their search for Clint and now for Harrison, who, had mysteriously disappeared as soon as they had walked through the front door.

Because of course he had. It was like he had a sixth sense or something.

Aimee had made some passing comment about how we all needed to meet up more which started Mom off about how many apples she had lying around the house and finishing with Dad asking if we wanted to come round for tea. Naturally, I'd said yes.

And now, I was sat laying on their couch stuffed full of stew and apple crumble whilst watching the kids through the patio windows chasing Aimee, Joe and Tim around the garden and giggling like hyenas. 

Because Tim had also been invited to the so called 'family dinner.' The whole evening had felt like Tim's opportunity to meet the family, even if he and Aimee weren't officially dating yet. It made me smirk, regardless, because Aimee and Tim seemed to be constantly smiling while they were in each other's company. I could see it. He was a really nice, funny, decent guy and judging from the way he kept staring at her throughout the meal, it was only going to be a matter of time before someone made a move.

Maybe that move would be made at the party I had, for reason's not quite clear to even myself, agreed to host on Friday. At least it would be something to distract myself from everything else that was going on.

And because Aimee and Tim had been constantly making eyes at each other throughout the meal, it had meant no one had asked me any questions about Aaron that I really didn't want to answer.

I was scrolling mindlessly through my phone, with both Mom and Dad in the kitchen and their conversation just a low murmur. My mind still felt like it was fizzing from earlier, the knowledge that Harrison had somehow been able to find me pushing me further onto the edge. If he knew, then the rest of the gang definitely knew my location as well. Clint knew.

Aaron, clearly, wasn't lying on the couch next to me. He was still on the hunt which made Clint sound even more like an escaped animal than previously. He'd told me earlier that they'd lost Clint physically but managed to trace him to an apartment which was where they thought the group had been hiding out.

Their progress seemed to be coming thick and fast now; they knew Harrison's identity and they'd found their possible base of operations. It had taken long enough, considering the shit-storm that the media was producing with their infatuation with the case and the paranoia that bubbled within me daily, no matter what I did or didn't do. Preoccupation with work or dance or something else could only keep my mind contained for so long before it started to shake.

And yet despite all this progress, I knew that I would be lucky to see Aaron before I went to bed tonight. It was the whole the-gang-might-be-looking-for-me angle that Aaron was obviously taking very seriously because he was protective and caring and somewhat territorial.

I sighed, dropping my cell onto the coffee table in front of me and letting my head loll back against the cushions. I almost wished that I had turned down Joe's apple juice and had accepted the beer or the wine instead. Having a killer so close to me who fight be tracking me down, with the intention of hurting me, the kids or Aaron wasn't something that I particularly liked but was also something that has not been unfamiliar over the last few months.

Some people would say all the murders that I had been involved with over the last few months were some sort of sign for a premonition. I was just glad that I wasn't one of those people. My Grandma was probably screaming in her grave that all this surely meant that Aaron couldn't be the one for me because, if he was, I wouldn't be surrounded by so much death. She's consider it to be a bad omen that I had been involved with all these crimes.

I called that bullshit. The only thing that I knew was that there were a load of psychopaths running around Virginia and I wished that they would just bloody stop. I was surprised that my parents hadn't brought the topic up yet but I presumed it was because the kids had been around. The murders had been all over the news and I knew that someone had mentioned Clint's name in the conversation. They knew that he was involved in everything.

I wasn't mad, which I thought I would be. I was glad that someone had told them, whether Kelly or Penelope or Aaron. It meant that I didn't have to and try and form coherent words about the whole thing and explain it to them. I was getting tired of the stress and the guilt and feeling shit.

I just wanted it to stop. I was praying that everything, the media coverage and the guilt, would end when they were caught.

If they were caught. I mentally chastised myself.

Of course they'd be caught. There was no better team than the BAU. I had every ounce of faith in them but that didn't stop the paranoia.

I looked up as my parents entered the room, closely followed by Joe who was bright red and panting heavily.

"I need a sit down." He panted, crashing down onto the couch next to me and running a hand through his hair. "Those kids have too much energy."

"You feeling okay?" Dad asked as he and Mom settled down on the other couch, a bowl of chips poised between them.

"Yeah." I swallowed.

"You sure?" I wanted to sigh because I'd been waiting for this moment. This was my interrogation. There was silence for a moment and I could see that Mom was dying to speak. Interrogations were what she'd been trained to do.

"You don't have to hide how difficult this is to deal with." She started slowly as I rolled onto my side, my arms pulled towards my chest. "And you don't have to do deal with it alone, which is what you've been doing so far."

"I've not." I insisted and Mom raised an eyebrow at me. She had a way of speaking that made me feel like a child again. I didn't exactly what to talk about this with them, I always preferred to let problems marinate inside of me without ever being spoken, but I knew that talking about it would always be better than a manic episode. "I've been talking it through with Aaron."

"Did that make you feel any better?" Dad chimed in as I shifted the cushion that was lying underneath my head.

"A little bit, but then - "

"You just felt more guilty for getting him worried about you when you want him to focus on the case." My mouth nearly dropped open as I stared back at Mom. Could she actually read my mind?

"How d'you know that?"

"Because that's how I felt every time something came up with me at work and I talked it through with your dad, I know that our scenarios are slightly different but I get it Lizzy, I really do."

"I'm just tired of feeling worried all the time, and feeling guilty about everything that's happening."

"It's not your fault."

I wanted to scream. I had heard those words so many bloody times now that they had lost their meaning. I knew it wasn't my fault. The logical part of my brain knew that too. It was just the rest of my brain that was stubbornly rejecting it.

"I knows that." I murmured, repressing my want to scream. "God, I knows that. I've been told it so many times but it still doesn't make the feeling go away."

"Oh darling..." Mum reached out her hand to take mine, gently squeezing it as she leaned forward to stroke at my hair. I didn't matter that I was in my thirties with two children. I still liked it when Mom brushed my hair and held my hand. That would never go away. "It will all be over soon, I promise, and then you'll get your man back and - "

"Please don't finish that sentence." Joe groaned from next to me, wiping his glasses on his t-shirt. "I do not need to think about what they do in their spare time."

"It's what Tim and Aimee will be doing soon." I said with a grin and Joe rolled his eyes.

"That's even grosser because Tim's a good friend and I feel more protective over Aimee."

"Gee, thanks." I said sarcastically, nudging his arm with my foot. Joe held his hands up in surrender, a wide grin on his face.

"That's only because you used to scare me a bit." I immediately raised an eyebrow at him, trying to push my anxiety further down.

"What?"

"You seemed so tall." Joe hurriedly explained. "I was a tiny toddler and you seemed like a absolute giant back then."

"Things always look scarier when you're small." Dad said with a smirk and I felt my stomach clench. It was true, but some things seemed awfully scary right now as an adult too.


	21. Viginti

I tugged my cardigan from my shoulders and adjusted the straps of my camisole, the sun beating down on us even though we were sitting partially in the shade. The kids were off playing at the far side of the play area, Kelly sat on the bench beside me, fanning herself with her hand. Aaron was at work and I hadn't wanted to sit alone on the bench for an hour, the book in my bag that I wasn't reading being a constant reminder of my over-active mind.

Mom's words had been circulating around in my head long after we returned home and I'd had to force myself not to start a conversation when Aaron had walked through the door, looking bone-tired. He spent his days thinking about nothing but the case; he deserved to be able to relax when he got home and not have to deal with the problems all over again. Hence, we'd put on some obscure, bad comedy and opened a bottle of wine instead. 

It hadn't stopped me thinking about what I would have said, however. Maybe the film had actually been good but I'd been playing too little attention to notice. 

"You know what I want?" Kelly mused, running a hand through her glossy hair.

"A yacht?" She had made frequent comments about her desire for a yacht over the years

"Other than a yacht."

"A hot boyfriend?"

"Other than that."

"A pay rise?" Kelly rolled her eyes, reaching over to nudge me in the ribs. I raised an eyebrow, all of my options expelled.

"A peppermint ice cream." This made me furrow my brows.

"I'm not sure if they do peppermint. That seems far too edgy for our little park."

"Shame." A moment passed of watching Kelly pick at her grey t-shirt out of the corner of my eye. She wanted to say something more, I could tell, but was biting her tongue in order to stop herself. "You know who else is edgy? Samuel. He turned up wearing a dark green suit last night. In theory, it sounds dreadful but he was able to pull it off somehow."

I didn't speak, my eyes widening as I watched Kelly sheepishly sip at the coffee in her hands. She met up with Samuel last night? She did not tell me that. I might be thinking about a lot right now but there was no way that I would have forgotten something like that.

"I'm sorry, when was this?" Kelly started grinning and her smile was infectious, a smile spreading onto my own face.

"Last night."

"Why?" The glee on Kelly's face was obvious as she started twirling a lock of her hair around her finger.

"I went on a date. Well, it wasn't a date-date. It was just some drinks."

"Right." I narrowed my eyes for a moment. Kelly seemed far too happy and excited thinking back to last night just for last night to have been a couple of drinks. "It might have started that way but how did it end?" She paused for a moment, biting her lip, before shrugging.

"He might have kissed me - "

"There we go." I started grinning even wider.

"On the cheek." My grin froze as I instantly narrowed my eyes, watching Kelly sigh and feeling personally let down on her behalf.

"What?"

"So disappointing. I really like him - "

"I can see that." I had been able to see that for months by merely looking over at the reception desk, bound to see a figure clutching a coffee cup and a smile shining too brightly given the early hour.

"He's hot and funny and clever and doesn't tell me that my eyes are uneven - "

"Okay, Scott was a dick." Scott had been Kelly's boyfriend almost five years ago now and things hadn't ended particularly smoothly, largely down to the fact that he had been an arrogant prick who expected perfection and, as Kelly was probably going to forever remember, had told her that her eyes were uneven.

"If anything, his balls were uneven." I snorted, quickly looking over at the play area to see Lola, Lexi and Jack all climbing up the slide.

"What happens next then? You still like him?" She nodded.

"I'm going to see how he feels about another date on Saturday. It went really well and he seemed to enjoy it so..." She trailed off, letting out a deep sigh and I felt a pang of empathy. She deserved to be happy and to find someone who treated her as well as she ought to be.

"He'll say yes. Don't worry about it." She nodded, the flash of insecurity in her eyes fading as she forced a smile to her face.

"Right." She sprung to her feet, throwing her hair over one shoulder. "I'm going to find some peppermint ice cream. Do you want anything?"

"I'm fine, thanks." I watched her walk away and allowed myself to close my eyes for a moment, basking in the sun now that I wasn't sweltering in my cardigan. The temperature this morning was perfect for me - not too hot or too cold and no hurricanes or tornados anywhere to be seen. Hurricanes and tornados had been my definition of perfect as a child, combined with scorching summers and freezing winters, because that was the only life I had known. I hadn't known a summer where the temperature hadn't straddled 100 or where a tornado a year wasn't completely commonplace.

"Sorry, can I sit here?" I looked up, startled, as a man gestured to the other side of the bench that was now empty since Kelly vacated it. My denial was waiting on my tongue but the words died in my throat as soon as I looked at the man's profile. He settled down onto the seat, straightening the collar of his jacket and I crossed my arms, leaning back slightly in my seat pretending that I hadn't just died a little on the inside.

Pretending that I didn't know him. Pretending that his face hadn't been haunting me since yesterday.

Depending on how long I could keep up that pretense would affect whether or not we got out of this alive.

It was Harrison Tipman. I could never forget that face. It looked like he'd found me.

I crossed my legs, tossing my hair over one shoulder and sitting up a little straighter. I couldn't let him see how I was panicking inside, how my breathing was now labored and I didn't know how I was going to get out of this situation. The kids were still playing in front of me; they had to be my priority. Nothing else mattered.

As motionlessly as I could, I reached into my cardigan pocket and pulled out my cell, holding it in the hand that was furthest away from Harrison. I willed my hand not to shake as I typed out a message to Kelly, keeping my eyes fixed on the play area and praying that the words would actually make sense. She needed to take the kids to the car and call the FBI. I sent the message, biting onto my lip as Harrison coughed next to me. I was going to be sick. The air was being sucked from my lungs as my mind began to panic. This had to be a dream. It had to be some kind of twisted, sick dream that I couldn't understand.

I heard Kelly's voice further down the path, her figure hidden by the trees and bushes that surrounded the play-area. She was calling them for ice-cream, a sure way to gather their attention and keep it. I almost smiled, if the nerves weren't too busy eating my insides.

A weight disappeared from the pit of my stomach as I watched the kids run away. My hands were slick with sweat; my mind was racing so fast I couldn't keep my thoughts in order. What the hell was he doing here? The idea that the gang were searching for me didn't seem so ridiculous anymore.

Fuck Clint for getting me into this. Hell, fuck everyone. Fuck Harrison for being such a - 

I looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps, my heart rate suddenly hiking. Were the FBI already here?

Kelly was approaching, her head held high and her eyes narrow. Why the hell hadn't she stayed in the car? Had I not been specific enough with my instructions?

Panicking wouldn't get me anywhere. Technically, he hadn't done anything yet. Maybe he just wanted to scare me? I could cope with that, no matter how much anxiety was brewing inside of me. Wanting to scare me was better than wanting to kill me.

I quickly inhaled as I felt his breath tickling the side of my neck, the heat from his skin warming my own in a way that made me want to throw up. He just wanted to scare me...He just wanted to scare me...He just wanted to scare me...

"I'll tell Clint that you send your regards..." I instantly sprung from my seat, recognizing that as a parting message if there ever was one. I walked away as calmly as I could, my feet moving as quickly as I was able. Kelly was already edging away from us but I managed to catch her gaze and mouth a single word to her. She narrowed her eyes.

"What?"

"Run." The pair of us started to sprint the second I heard the scuffle of gravel behind me. He had a gun in his pocket. I had realised the second he had sat down. I grabbed Kelly's arm, yanking her around a corner and pumping my arms to force myself to move faster, Kelly running full-felt alongside me. "We need to zig-zag - "

"What?"

"It's easier to shoot something if it's in a straight line."

"Thanks for the tip!" She yelled, her hair flying behind her as we turned the next corner. I was hoping that Kelly and I knew the park better than Harrison did and could use this to our advantage. What if we were shot? I had been panicked enough dealing with an incident when the gunman had left the scene. How was I going to cope if he was still here?

"What's the plan, exactly? It'd better not be to keep running until the FBI arrive because that's not going to work. I'm not a fucking Olympian."

"We need to hide." I panted, looking over my shoulder to see Harrison hurtling around the corner. I grabbed Kelly's arm and pushed her head down as we sped across the path, my heart in my mouth.

"When has that ever worked?"

"Or we could jump him? Get his gun?"

"Both of those options are crazy. Just pick one."

"Why me?" How far away were the FBI? I knew that neither plan was ideal but I was being forced to think on my feet. the pair of us couldn't keep running forever and already I could feel myself beginning to tire.

"Because you're the life on the line here." I shot her an incredulous look. "Since when was the life of an Danville Community College almost drop-out worth more than a gynecologist?"

"We are not doing this right now." I shouted back. "Just keep running. It's not a question of worth, anyway. I'd quite like it if no one died in this situation." I felt a pair of bullets ricochet from the tree behind us and Kelly let out a scream and started swearing, increasing her speed as she pulled me along.

We were being chased like a cheetah chases their prey here. We would run until we tired and then Harrison would kill us both. 

"I'm going for the second option - "

"But that was the worse one with more death." Another bullet skidded into the grass as our feet pounded along the path.

"Tough shit." I had something of an idea forming in my head, a stupid, crazy idea that Aaron would definitely dissuade me from attempting if he were here. But he wasn't here and I was just going to have to go for it.

"Can you keep running for another mile?"

"No."

"What if there's a guy with a gun chasing you?"

"Maybe." Kelly looked over at me, a worried but somewhat determined expression on her face. That was all I needed. That was all we had.

"Keeping going along the path and I'll see you on the other side."

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"I've no clue." I admitted, slowing my pace slightly as Kelly and I thundered down the hill. "All the stories of my parents' heroics must have sent me crazy. But it's just a tackle. I've tackled people before."

"Not people with guns."

"There's a first time for everything right?", I couldn't believe I was even thinking this but I couldn't rely on anyone to come and save us. The majority of the time, no one did. I was one of the most fortunate ones to have a whole team of FBI agents on my speed dial. But I still couldn't rest my life, or Kelly's on that.


	22. Viginti Unum

I was running as fast as I possibly could down the path, my heart racing. What if I had just sent Kelly to her death? I had followed the fork in the path that led into the woods while Kelly had continued along the main path, Harrison hot on her heels. Either he had presumed I was simply ahead of Kelly, out of his eyeline, or he didn't care as to who he shot just as long as it was somebody.

I didn't know which reality was scarier.

I couldn't allow myself to slow down as I sprinted down the edge of the trees, branches snapping under my feet. The paths soon would converge again and I needed to be running alongside Harrison when they did if I wanted any hope of jumping and disarming him.

My hair was flying around my face as I dodged a tree-stump and stumbled down the hill. At least Lola, Lexi and Jack were in the car. That was the only saving grace here, the only part of this entire plan that didn't have me breaking into a sweat. They were safe and Harrison couldn't hurt them. Now I only had to worry about myself, Kelly and the scattering of people I had seen walking through the park. There was no doubt in my mind that Harrison would hurt one of them if it came down to it; this might have started out as an elaborate plan just to scare me but that didn't mean I was the only person who could be hurt.

The playground that was usually occupied by teenagers was just up ahead and, ideally, I wanted to have stopped Harrison before he got there. I didn't need any of those kids getting caught in his crossfire.

I pumped my arms even harder, pushing the hair from my face as I scanned the path for any sign of Kelly or Harrison. It was any second now that I should be upon them. Any second now. Any minute...

Shit.

What if this whole thing had gone horribly wrong and Kelly was bleeding out in a sand pit this very moment, her torso littered with bullets. What if the kids -

No. There they were. Thankfully. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if something had happened to Kelly all in the name of my so-called brilliant plan.

Kelly was running like the wind, a determined expression on her face, as Harrison sprinted behind her. She was zig-zagging across the path, her head down and darting between the trees that lined the border of the path leaving him unable to get a clear shot of her. He must have clicked that I wasn't there by now. He was clearly brazen but he wasn't stupid; if he was then he and the rest of the group would have been caught days ago by the FBI.

I raced forwards, using my last reserve of energy to push myself forwards so that I was running alongside him. I could feel the wind whipping around me, my legs almost non-existent. He was almost on Kelly, the gun held firm in his right hand. The path was on a slope with a hill rolling down to the edge of the park to its right. I sucked in a deep breath, altering my course as I tackled Harrison around the ribs, clamping a leg down on his hand which held his gun. We tumbled down the hill, pain rocketing through every part of my body as we skid over rocks and branches. 

Fuck. I tried to scramble to my feet as we collapsed at the bottom, Harrison slowly pulling himself to his knees. I grabbed the gun that had slid from his hand in the fall and pushed myself to my feet, my lungs screaming for breath and every part of my body aching. Harrison was taking his time getting to his feet as I stood panting, the gun held tightly between my bruised fingers.

He slowly raised his head, his eyes glaring deep into my own so much that I wanted to look away. I didn't recognise or know him from before all of this had started, even if he clearly did. I was sure that he wasn't one of Clint's old friends - I was certain I would remember him - and if he somehow had been and slipped beneath my radar, he certainly hadn't been as much of a psychopath as he was now.

I turned my head at the sound of footsteps and labored breathing, instantly tensing and then relaxing as Kelly stumbled down the hill. She was clutching at her sides and breathing heavily as she came to stop beside me, tipping her head backwards and pushing her hair away from her face.

"I don't want to offend your brilliant plan but Jesus fucking Christ Lizzy - the next time one of your plans involve me running to the point of almost death I'm going to say fuck no and run the other way. You got that?"

'Got it." I confirmed, focusing back on Harrison's figure. Where the fuck were the BAU? Had something held them up? Had something happened? Were they all okay?

I swallowed deeply and concentrated on Harrison. I couldn't afford to let my thoughts run away, especially not when I had a gun in my hands.

Harrison definitely wasn't as brawny or muscly as I thought he was going to be. That had to be a positive. I had more of a chance to actually be able to control him. Then again, Clint had never been particularly muscly and supposed that they had to have some things in common if they were 'friends' now.

"Was your genius plan to jump me in the park and then lie on the floor?" I spat as Harrison squinted back at me, his stillness unnerving. He coughed and cleared his throat, the sound jolting me. I needed to keep it together. I had a live weapon in my hands.

I know you're pretty handy with a gun so you could say that I didn't want to do anything that might piss you off." I kept my expression neutral, not wanting to give him any extra ammunition with which to fire back at me. I could feel Kelly staring at me, her face full of confusion, but I was determined to keep my eyes fixed on Harrison. I couldn't underestimate him.

"And how the fuck do you know that?" I've never had a gun at home, not since I moved out of my parent's house to go to medical school so there was no way that he could have got that nugget of information from Clint, even if he was being rather talkative about me lately. Had Harrison been reading up on me? That was something I didn't even want to think about.

"I knows that you think I'm just a stupid thug - " He started, his voice completely calm and relaxed. He seemed even friendly, considering the jovial smile on his face and the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. I held the gun even tighter. "But if I really was, would I still be freely roaming around the streets giving the FBI the finger?"

I swallowed, my mouth completely dry. When he spoke like that, he reminded me of the jock Clint had been as a teenager before he'd started to calm down and think that there was more to life than soccer. Had they known each other back then? Or was my mind just desperate to form connections between the man standing in front of me and the man I had lived with for so many years?

"Well, then." I forced a smirk, watching Harrison fold his arms and take a step towards me. He was getting cocky; the gun I had aimed at his chest wasn't doing what I hoped it would. I just had to hope that the FBI were getting a fucking move on and continue on with the scrambled plan that I was assembling in my head. "We've just put a stop to your freedom fighting because the FBI are on their way right now."

The smile froze on his face. He hadn't known that Kelly had contacted them, that I had contacted her while he'd been sat next to me. The arrogant, casual air around him was quickly turning into something dangerous and bitter. Should I have told him that? Probably not. But I needed to remind him that I was the one in charge here, not him.

Harrison seemed exactly the time of person to try and fight their way out of a contained corner. He was one of the rabid coyotes that my grandma had to chase away from the farm with her rifle. But I hadn't been born raised on bourbon. I didn't have the same grit and brutal nature that she did. I was just going to have to pretend that I did.

"So you can tell Clint that he's fucking around on the wrong side and he needs to get his ass in gear. That includes turning himself in right now before he hurts anybody else." I could feel Kelly hovering more closely to my shoulder. It wasn't just myself that I had to think about here. The adrenaline was beginning to fade from my body, leaving exhaustion in its wake. I couldn't afford to seem tired; I had to seem capable of firing a round of bullets into his chest.

"And how am I going to convey that message, darling?" Harrison smirked and raised an eyebrow, an expression that must have worked to charm every girl in every bar across the city.

He thought too much of himself, though. He thought that I wouldn't shoot. He thought I was stupid. If he knew that I could shoot a gun then his research hadn't gone deep enough into knowing about my background and the upbringing that I had. Having a police officer and an FBI agent for parents meant that I knew a hell of a lot more than Harrison was giving me credit for.

"Because you're wearing an earpiece and I'm betting that they can hear me right now." This was just a presumption and I didn't know whether I wanted it to be true or not. Could Clint hear me? What was he thinking? Did he even care?

"You think you're so clever, don't you?"

"Well, I - " The words died in my throat as a round of bullets soared through the air from behind us. I threw myself at Kelly and dragged her to the ground and settling behind a large clump of bushes.

"Shit. Shit. Shit." Kelly was murmuring rapidly under her breath as I fired into the trees. Someone else was there. Someone else was shooting at us and it certainly wasn't the BAU. Harrison was sprinting away back down the path as Kelly pulled me back down, her arms clutching her head.

"HE'S ON THE MOVE!" I yelled, knowing that the BAU were around her somewhere because I'd seen one of the black SUVs parked outside the gates when I'd been running to catch up with Harrison. My heart was furiously pounding as the shooting paused for a moment. I could hear the blood rushing through my ears, Kelly's labored breathing matching my own. 

What if Harrison got away? I'd been so close. He'd been there and now - 

"What if it's Clint shooting at us?" Kelly whispered as I pressed my head down against the grass, mirroring her position, and looking into her eyes.

"It had better not be or I'm going to gut him like a fish when I get my hands on him." Because that was what I really feared, wasn't it? That despite everything I had been saying, I didn't want him to be a part of this. I wanted him to have been forced by some enigmatic leader or blackmailed.

Because if he was shooting at us, that meant that Clint I had known really was gone forever.


	23. Viginti Duo

Kelly was clinging onto my arm, her nails digging into my forearm as she blinked back at me, the silence blaring around us. The only sound I could hear, other than the thumping of my heartbeat, was Kelly's quiet murmurs of how stupid this was and how stupid my plan was and how she was never listening to one of my stupid plans ever again. I was trying to block her out and concentrate on not getting the pair of us shot.

The shooter was hiding somewhere in the trees but, from my angle of lying on the floor, I couldn't make out any outline of a person, never mind enough identifying markers to discover their name. Was it one of the gang members? It had to be and that meant this whole thing was an awful lot more planned out than I had initially thought it was. It wasn't just Harrison appearing to scare me and fuck shit up because he was a sadistic shit. There was at least two of them so this was a conscious and deliberate move and to freak me the fuck out.

Fantastic.

I lifted my head from the ground, listening out for any scrape against metal or the crunching of leaves. I didn't know how many bullets were left in my gun but I knew that it wasn't many. If Aaron didn't fucking show up in a minute with some kind of solution that involved something other than hiding in the bushes, trying to figure out who was shooting at us from the trees and praying that Harrison had tripped over a tree root and sprained his ankle and was unable to escape. Again.

I looked over at Kelly, her eyes tightly closed and her hands clutched so tightly that the bare bones of her knuckles were protruding through her skin. In some way, I wished that Kelly hadn't stopped running when I'd tackled Harrison down a hill and had just run off. I was very good at not caring amount myself.

"You okay?" Kelly looked up at me, a sly look on her face. "We're both covered in grass and trying not to have a heart attack and when I agreed to go to the park with you I did not think I would end up lying in a ditch and being shot at."

"We're not in a ditch, we've rolled down a hill." I murmured, peering up over the grass.

"Technically, we've rolled down a hill and ended up in a ditch."

"We might be able to get out of the ditch in a minute because the shots have stopped."

"Have they? Or is it just a ruse so we'll start to move and then we'll get shot?" I glared over at her and took her hand, glancing at the gun that I had placed on the ground.

"Just wait."

"So now we're lying in a ditch all day with the kids locked in the car listening to Justin Bieber?" Kelly, in a similar vein to myself, started to ramble and go off completely on a tangent whenever we were scared or nervous, in order to try and ignore the fact that we scared or nervous. But the kids were safe and - 

Suddenly, Kelly let out a yelp as more bullets started firing over our heads and I pressed my skull flat against the ground, rocks painfully sticking into my chest as I muffled my breathing. It took me a moment to realise that the bullets weren't coming from the trees but from somewhere to my left and weren't being aimed towards the path where Kelly and I were hiding.

It was another source. A third party. I bloody hoped that it was the BAU. I wanted to get out of the ditch and check on the kids and then figure of why the gang had something against me to the degree where they would personally seek me out and terrify me. 

If they came after me, which they had, there was nothing stopping them from coming after the kids again and Aaron and my family and my friends. I might be an open target but there was no way in hell I was going to let anyone else get hurt.

This had gone on for much too fucking long already.  
***  
My feet brushed against the floor and crunched on the leaves underfoot. Next to me, Kelly was gently swinging on the swing, her cell in her hand. The FBI were swabbing the path for footprints and we couldn't contaminate their samples, hence taking to the swings in the teenage play area.

The FBI had already closed parts of the park off to the public in order to search for evidence, evidence that I was fairly certain they wouldn't be able to find. The gang seemed to be exacting in every move they made and they hadn't made any mistakes or given anything over to us yet. It seemed unlikely that it was going to happen now.

On my left, the kids were busily playing soccer with a slightly moldy basketball that had been left in the corner. The moment the FBI had arrived, I hurried to the car and brought them back with me. I didn't want to leave them alone for any longer than I already had. I needed them where I could see them, where I didn't need to panic about them being snatched from my sight. 

I'd already told a series of FBI agents, including the BAU, what had happened, what Harrison had said to me and every other minute detail that I could remember. It still didn't feel like enough, though, and every time I tried to think of something I had missed, the only thing I locked onto was the anxiety and fear that had been running through my systems and that I had been desperately trying to repress.

I wasn't sure who the second shooter had been and I probably never would be now. Could it have been Clint? I wanted to believe that he would never ever point a gun at me, regardless of whether he was being forced or blackmailed, but I hadn't seen him for over a year and everything felt different now. I didn't know him. I didn't know the new life he was leading and his motives or his personality. He might as well be a ghost to me now.

I looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps and saw JJ walking over to us while pulling her long hair into a ponytail. "Are you both alright?"

"We're fine." I assured, looking over at Kelly as she pushed her cell into her pocket.

"I mean, I probably have dog shit in my hair but it's all in a days work."

"We've been thinking about extra security measures - " JJ said, turning to face me. "And we think it would be a good idea to have someone watching your house."

"What?" 

"We're arranging to have two officers in front of your house at all times. They won't be in uniform and the car will be unmarked, you won't be able to tell that they're cops but they'll be there. Is that alright?"

This suddenly felt far too real. If the being stalked part hadn't hit home to me just how determined the gang were, the fact that the FBI now thought I needed someone sat in front of my house making sure I was okay certainly did. It had come to this. It had come to this because of Clint.  
"We want to keep you and your family safe." JJ continued, her eyebrows furrowing slightly, "and these guys clearly have no problems stalking her. We don't know what they'll try next and we need to be ready for anything." My throat still felt dry, but I knew that I had to accept. This wasn't just for me, this was for Aaron and the kids too.

"Does Aaron know about this?"

"Yes and - " JJ turned quickly, calling over Aaron from where he was talking to a group of police officers with the rest of the BAU. I'd only had a brief moment to talk to him, to hug him, to feel his warm lips against me own whilst asking me if I was hurt.

"Is everything okay?" After waiting for him to appear for so long, for praying for him to arrive so that my fear could finally be tamed, the fact that he was now standing in front of me almost made me forget just what was going on and what danger I was in.

"No," I said with a smirk, looking over at Kelly from the corner of my eye. "Kelly has dog shit in her hair."

"Possibly."  
"And then there's the part that a group of violent, unpredictable men are coming after me and I don't know why."

"There doesn't seem to be any real reason for them to come after you." Spencer said, straightening his purple and green striped tie. "It doesn't fit with the profile. They might just be doing it to scare you."

"So what is stopping them from going after my parents or Aimee, or Joe or Kelly - "

"I've got a taser now, I can protect myself." I raised an eyebrow at her and she grinned.

"What?"

"After the whole Tomas-Rudd-turned-out-to-be-a-psycho thing, I got myself a taser." In any other world, the idea of Kelly with a taser would be a hysterical thought but that world wasn't this one. Thing had changed. There had been to many deaths in too few months for me to be able to properly relax anymore. The fact that Kelly could protect herself now was a good thing, even if she shouldn't have to.

"These guys are opportunistic killers." Derek said, "We've just not got to give them the opportunity to hurt you. You're not their target. You don't fit the rest of their kills."

"But do opportunistic killers stalk one of their member's ex-fiancées?" I said bluntly. It didn't make sense anymore. Nothing made sense.

"Just try and not panic about it. We've got it sorted." David said calmly but his voice didn't calm me. My thoughts were too busy racing.

"Well maybe you've got the profile wrong because they definitely planned this. It wasn't opportunistic. They planned it and they came after me and they can do it again if they don't get stopped."


	24. Viginti Tres

The kids had moved away from the soccer, growing bored once they realised the deflated basketball didn't have enough power to score from any significant distant, and had instead moved to the swings, begging me to push them so they could soar even higher. The repetitive action was soothing and their laughter made me smile, no matter how heavy my body felt, but couldn't stop me from thinking just why the gang were so interested in me. Was that going to be my future? Forever condemned to consider just what made me so appealing to group of murderers?

No other ex-fiancées of the gang members had been targeted, leaving no real reason for their attention towards me. That was what Spencer and Derek had been saying earlier. But what if it wasn't specifically me that they were following? What if it was Clint they were targeting? It was something I had been debating for a while, just to what extent was Clint complicit and involved in the activity of the group, and perhaps this was my answer.

He was the weakest link and I was some kind of leverage that they were using. Was Clint really less compliant in the action than Harrison had made him out to be him out to be? What if he was being forced or coerced into helping?

A bystander who did nothing was as bad as the perpetrator. But what if he didn't have any choice in the matter? Did that change things? How much? Did I know who Clint was again?

I gave Lexi another push, her legs kicking wildly in the air as she tilted her head back and laughed. I involuntarily grinned, smirking as she turned around to look at me. 

"Lizzy?" Dave was walking towards me, a smile on his face yet a severity in his expression that pulled me away from the swings. "Can we talk to you for a second?"

"Sure. Be careful you lot - " I followed after him, raising an eyebrow in the kids direction as I dodged between the cops that were still swarming the park, none of which I recognised. Kelly had disappeared around ten minutes ago in the search of coffee and cookies to bring back because running from a pyscho made her crash, apparently. She wasn't the only one.

The team were standing around in a circle, their eyes watching me as I approached, and I felt like I was back in middle school again and was about to be told off for something. Were they going to bring up how I'd snapped at them earlier? I hadn't meant to but everything just seemed to be going around in circles with not much to show for it and I didn't know what else to do. They'd found out small bits of information but not enough to lead to anything concrete and now I was having to have a patrol outside of my own house. 

"We want to go through with you what we known so far." Dave said, shooting a look to the rest of the team. Aaron was standing opposite me, his expression stern which was really his default expression. But there was something else etched onto his face, a softness and a tiredness that made me smile as he met my gaze. This wasn't any easier for him than it was for me.

"We've managed to locate the apartment that we believe is their base of operations and we've also found Harrison Tipman's car. Both the apartment and the car are registered to him and him only so that doesn't give us any further details to the identities of the others, aside from Mr. Summers." I bit my lip at the mention of his name. I couldn't help it.

"We've sent photographs of Harrison Tipman and Mr. Summers to almost every precinct in the state." Emily noticed and I noticed how they referred to him as Mr. Summers, rather than Clint. They were trying to make me feel better. "We've also got Garcia going through all the CCTV from outside their apartment and we've flagged up all the hospitals in the local area in case Harrison or the other shooter try to seek any medical attention for the injuries they sustained." 

Should I have followed Harrison? We had him in our grasp and then we lost him because Kelly and I had to dive under and a bush in order not to get shot. If he was in custody, this would be an entirely different conversation. I wouldn't be listening to the BAU discuss when, or if, the gang were going to strike again and whether putting a patrol unit at the front of my house would be enough. We'd have answers to the questions that had been piling up for days and were waiting on the tip of my tongue.

Because nothing made sense to me and I felt as though I was drowning.

"What about the sexual assault? If the gang really is opportunistic then why would they waste time doing it? Why would they waste time burning them? Why didn't they just shoot them and run?"

"Gang culture can be complicated." Derek started. "It's all about maintaining an image and - "

"That doesn't explain why all those killed have been cops. That's not maintaining an image and that's not just a coincidence. That was a deliberate point." I wanted answers, even if they were nothing more than guesses.

"So it's not about gang culture." Aaron said, his eyes flickering to mine, his voice firm yet comforting. I had always trusted Aaron and, no matter what was going on, he had the ability to make me feel safe and in control even when I really wasn't. "What if they're making a point about the police?"

That made more sense in my head than just a sporadic killing. But what specific injustices did the gang have with the police?

"Does Clint have any connection with cops?" Dave asked, looking over at me and my mind began to race. "Any bad feelings that you know of? Anything to do with his childhood?"

"He was brought up in care but that wouldn't really give him access to the police would - " I couldn't believe it hadn't crossed my mind sooner. I was an idiot. An idiot. "Oh shit."

"What is it?" Emily looked concerned.

"His parents were killed in a car crash when he was a child. The other driver was a cop, she'd just finished her shift, she'd claimed she was exhausted - "

"The cop was a woman?" I nodded. "Did she survive?"

"Barely. I'm sure he said that she damaged her spine. I wouldn't be surprised if she's not been able to walk since - "

"And that's why he didn't go after her." Aaron said. "He might have wanted to take that frustration out on officers but didn't think there was anything else he could do to her."

His parents were killed when he was five years old. Was that a strong enough reason to justify his actions? Could anything ever justify murder? 

"What if they're using Lizzy for leverage?" I frowned at Spencer's words, letting them sink into my skin. So he wasn't doing this willingly? "He started off wanting to be a part of it but now he wants out."

"And Harrison and the others decide that he needs a little more persuading. That's why they've started looking for Lizzy and coming after her. They're blackmailing him with you." Dave finished.

It was a theory, still only a guess, but I wanted it to be right. I wanted Clint to be being forced into it because, that way, I could feel as though that I hadn't made the wrong choice all those years ago of falling in love with him. I could feel as though our life hadn't been a lie and him and I and the girls - 

"Is it me? Or is it Lola and Lexi?" Aaron was staring at me, a deep frown crossing his face. "What if they don't want me? What if they want - "

"Then all the more reason to have a patrol on the house." Aaron said solemnly as my hands began to sweat. I'd been stuck in a hole thinking about nothing other than myself but what if they wanted to get their hands on the kids? 

"Lizzy, we're not going to let them hurt them." Aaron's voice, thick with emotion, cut through me like a knife. His eyes were boring into mine and I wanted nothing more than to reach out across the circle and take his hands. I nodded, forcing a deep breath through my lungs.

I wasn't going to let them get hurt and neither was Aaron or the BAU. I didn't have anything to worry about. All I had to think about was making sure the kids felt safe.

"I know." It didn't make the prospect of a violent gang coming after them with the intention of using them as a bargaining chip against their father any more comforting. "And I've been thinking how you can if the DNA at any of the crime scenes is Clint's , or at least try."

"How do you know about that?" Spencer asked and I shrugged, pushing down my feelings of fear and focusing on what something more practical.

"Pen texted me. She's been keeping me up to date with the science side of things and making me explain what they mean over the text."

"And? What's the genius plan?" Derek said with a smile.

"Lola and Lexi are made up of 50% of Clint's DNA. You could take of theirs and compare it to the samples; any of Clint's DNA will have a 50% match with theirs."

"You'd be okay letting us do that?" Emily asked and I bit my lip. I'd been thinking about it for the last couple of days and we really didn't have other options. It wouldn't be painful and I was willing to do anything to keep the kids safe.

"It will either prove that he's innocent so we can protect him or it will condemn him and, if that's the case, then he needs to answer for his crimes."


	25. Viginti Quattour

I kicked off my heels, the balls of my feet sighing in relief as I pushed away from my desk. Did the monotony ever end? Did the worry and the panic ever end? I'd eaten my pitta and my yogurt and flapjack that I'd prepared last night and worked my way through a third of my patient list but I still felt as though my mind had been taken over by something else and was being held hostage from my own mind. I'd taken Lola to have her DNA test earlier in morning after explaining to her just what was happening and why it would be useful if she had it done but still giving her a chance to say no. I'd been in the room while the nurse had swabbed her the inside of her mouth and her fingerprints and the whole thing still hadn't felt real.

By using her DNA, we should be able to identify whether any of the DNA that had been found at the crime scenes belonged to Clint. Either that, or I would discover that I had a half-brother that I'd never known about because that was what always happened on crime shows. Kelly had apparently spent the morning re-designing my family tree with all the new relatives that we were going to discover I had as a result of the test, whilst Hannah handled most of the calls.

Not that there were many calls during the morning or Kelly wouldn't have been doodling my cousins on to a piece of paper for something to do.

It had been the first night that I'd gone to sleep with the knowledge that there a pair of police officers sat outside of the house and their sole job was to watch. They were there to protect me from the bad guys, so to speak. I hadn't ever thought that I would be the one in that situation.

They were waiting to see whether Harrison would return, or Clint, or anyone else who could fit the description of a gang member. I was praying that he never would. I never wanted to see his slimy face ever again, even if I still didn't really understand why he, or the rest of them, were so obsessed with me. I was trying to push the idea of them homing in on Lola and Lexi out of my mind because the prospect of them being hunted and hurt like prey made me want to cry. I was just going to have to accept that something was happening that I couldn't control and move on.

I had done everything that I could to control what was happening, what I always did if Aaron's analysis of me was anything to go by. Now I just had to see what would happen next.

***

I was slowly witling my way through my patient list for the afternoon - and simultaneously dealing with the seemingly constant stream of paperwork that Evan had for me. He had been coming into her room sporadically over the last two hours with more patients that needed something signing off or something else that he wanted to go through with me. His arrivals were always accompanied by a sarcastic quip and a comment about my productiveness or whether I'd decided to join the FBI yet. It was entertaining and distracting and mildly annoying but it was something to make me smile.

Something else that was mildly annoying was that I was still pulling fluff out of my hair from last night when the kids had decided to cover me in cushions. They had definitely had too much popcorn while we'd been watching Rise of the Guardians and that was the price I'd paid for it.

I looked up at another knock on the door, waiting for Evan to waltz through with something else that he needed me to sign. I was beginning to think that all his visits were building up to something but -

I raised an eyebrow as Kelly walked through the door, her hair tied up in a bun and secured with a pencil. "What's up?"

"You've got a call."

"From who?" I knew that if it was anything serious, anything involving my parents or the kids or Aaron, then someone would ring my cell which was permanently on vibrate in my desk drawer. Not many people tended to call me directly through work, unless they couldn't get hold of me any other way.

"A Detective Henderson?"

"He's one of the officers watching my house this morning." I said with a sigh. Aaron was forcing every officer who was assigned to the house to introduce themselves to me so I knew both their name and their appearance, in an attempt to make me rest easier about the fact that there was a group of police officers sat in front of my house at all hours of the day. Henderson had introduced himself to me this morning, while I'd been half-way through comping down a croissant and glass of orange juice. He seemed nice, a resident New-Yorker who'd jumped states last year and was a die-hard Jets fan.

"Right." I followed Kelly back into the foyer, dodging past a group of chattering patients. Kelly and I had had a lengthy text conversation last night about just what had happened in the park and whether we were both doing okay as a result. We'd both said we were fine, but I didn't underestimate what being shot at could do to someone. "Why didn't he call my cell?"

"Because he thinks that's weird and unprofessional? I don't know - "

"Or because it's in your locker like it should be." I rolled my eyes as Evan passed me, a handful of folders clutched to his chest. 

"As if you keep your cell in your locker. I've seen it on your desk."

"That's just boss benefits." He said with a grin.

"Technically, you're not my boss." I shouted back as he disappeared round the corner and reached for the phone. Kelly sank down into her chair, reaching for the coffee that was steaming next to the computer screen. "Hello? Detective Henderson?"

"It's so lovely to speak to you again." I tightened my grip around the phone as my blood froze in my veins. I forced my breathing to remain steady even as my hands began to sweat.

How was Harrison talking with to me? How had he managed to get my number? How - 

It didn't matter how, all that mattered was that he had. What should I do? I bit my lip, ignoring the confused look that Kelly was shooting in my direction. I'd do the only thing that I seemed to do nowadays: tell the FBI.

"How did you get my number?" I said it casually, reaching for the pad of paper that rested by the computer and a pen from my skirt pocket. Kelly was frowning with her posture rigidly upright; she could tell that something wasn't right. "What do you want?" I scribbled out the words that had been my saving grace in the last couple of weeks, the words that were growing increasingly more tiring that I had to rely upon.

Call the FBI. Then, as an afterthought, it's Harrison Shipman on the phone.

"It's not particularly hard to find Dr. Harmon and St. Addison's hospital, Lizzy." I hated the smugness in his tone, the self-satisfaction at his game of following me wherever I was. Clearly, then, he wasn't bleeding out in a hospital under the name of John Doe, like Kelly had joked last night.

"And how did you find that out?" My throat was growing tighter. If they could find out where I worked, what other information could they find out about me? Clearly Detective Henderson wasn't working if Harrison was able to find out were I worked?

"Clint was very helpful." I felt my heart stop. He was giving them information about me. The prospect of Clint being forced into the activity seemed to be diminishing with every passing day. Why was I still protecting him? Because, at the very core of all this, I still wanted him to be innocent. 

My head was beginning to spin. Kelly was still on the phone, her mouth moving too fast for me to make out the words. I swallowed, trying to keep my voice light.

"Is there a point to this conversation or is it just eating needlessly into my time?"

"You really do have a beautiful house. I can see why Clint was so reluctant to leave."

"How about you leave my house and my family the fuck alone?" I snapped, my voice echoing like bullets in the relative silence of the corridor. Evan halted in his tracks from where he was walking back down the corridor.

"What's happening?" I heard Evan's voice startled voice but I didn't know what to say. My panic was already racing far ahead of what my rational mind could cling onto.

"Aaron said to keep him talking." Kelly murmured. "Pen's trying to track the call."

"Why are you so defensive, Lizzy?" I had to keep him talking. All the guilt that I had surrounding his escape from the park yesterday could be remedied from my actions now. "What do you think we'll find?"

"You wouldn't understand." I said stonily, as Evan slowly began to walk towards me.

"And why's that?"

"I'm defensive out of love. That's an emotion you clearly find it difficult to understand."

"According to Clint, you were something of a pyscho bitch." I knew that he was trying to rile me up. Clint would never say that, he was putting words into his mouth and putting them into my ears to make me listen and break apart.

"According to Clint, I was the love of his life. Not heroin or petty theft. Your words don't have much merit anymore and neither do his. Just turn yourself in, Harrison." There was a moment of silence that stretched out into far too many heartbeats. Kelly was sat frozen in front of the computer, Evan awkwardly tapping his fingers against the desk and his eyes boring into my head.

"Speak soon, Lizzy." The line went dead, the empty ringing blaring in my ears. I pulled the phone away from me, meeting Kelly's narrow glare. "He put the phone down."

"Fuck." She murmured and I nodded.

"Who was that?" Evan asked.

"Harrison." I said vaguely, knowing that Evan had no idea who Evan was. "He just doesn't know when to quit it."

"You need to ignore him." Kelly said and I shook my head.

"What I need to do is slap him and then make him turn himself in so this can all be over."


	26. Viginti Quinque

Due to a handful of last minute cancellations, I somehow managed to finish early enough in order to pick the kids up from school. That was one of the things that I always missed when I was seeing patients, no matter how much I loved doing my job, and was one of things that was always guaranteed to make me feel better after a long, shit day. Every day felt long, though, lately, being eaten up by the anxiety and the paranoia and the damned fear that Harrison and his cronies were going to find me again, dragging Clint's half-beaten body behind him and shouting how did I like it now.

I sighed, flexing my hands around the steering wheel. Today the enjoyment of picking the kids up from school was only partly working because there were shit days and then there were days when a man who is a part of a murder gang with some vendetta against me managed to get hold of me at work.

I'd sat in my office for half an hour afterwards, my nerves still rattling around. The net felt like it was closing in around me, that I was a rabbit trapped in a clearing and could see the hunters gathering round with their rifles and their pitchforks. 

My words hadn't even seemed to affect him. He saw this whole thing, dangling Clint and I's life in his fingers, as a damned game. But it wasn't a game to me. It was my life that they were ruining and I didn't find it funny.

I halted at the traffic lights, sighing as I rested my head back against the chair and looked at the winding lines of traffic that I seemed to spend half of my life waiting in. The kids were pettily arguing about something on the back seat, something that I couldn't understand, but just the fact that I was on my way home was enough to make me relax. I couldn't wait to throw my coat over the bannister, kick off my heels, make a pasta bake, have a glass of wine and watch a rom-com so cheesy that it physically made me cringe.

Would I be able to convince Aaron to watch Mamma Mia! with me? Or, more likely, I would have to turn it into a solo movie marathon because I didn't know what time he'd be back. I'd had a lengthy phone conversation with him once Harrison had hung up on me, talking about everything that they could do and whether I was feeling okay and whether I wanted him to come over to the hospital. I'd told him no, that I had work to do and so did he, but that didn't mean I wasn't urging to see him and cuddle up next to him on the sofa.

That was something else that I hated about Harrison. His shit was interfering in Aaron's life as well as my own. I would break my own arm before I left Harrison get involved in the lives of my kids; that was where the line was drawn. I wasn't going to let it get that far.

The traffic slowly crawled forwards, an a old black sedan waiting in the lane beside me. My eyes were only drawn to the vehicle because the silver hardware was catching the sun and flashing light into my eyes. I knew that some people would rather spend money on their cars than their homes but so much silver really was very impractical and a driving hazard.

My cell flashed up on the car seat next to me, a news-update slowly scrolling across the screen. I felt my heart begin to quicken. A man had come forward after the recent killings and had handed himself into police. That was all the information that was available and yet I had to read the sentence several times before it sunk into my head. Had someone come forward with information or had a member of the group turned themselves in? Was it Clint?

What if it was? Would any more of the group members follow? I doubted Harrison ever would but what about the others? Had the punishments began to outweigh their goals? Could this be the end?

It might all be over by the end of the day. That fact alone seemed like a fantasy. The rest I had been craving might finally happen, after all this time. 

"Mom?" Lola's quiet voice broke through my thoughts, barely audible over the thrum of the engines.

"Yes honey?"

"Do you know the people in that car because they keep waving at us?" I let Lola's words settle over my skin. I didn't have to look up to know that she was referring to the black sedan that was stationary beside us. I slowly turned my head, paranoia crawling over my skin. I didn't know anyone who owned that car. I had never ever seen that car and -

Shit. Fucking shit. It was Harrison, half hanging out of the car window with a cigarette in between his fingers and three other men in the back. They definitely hadn't been the ones to hand themselves in, then. My hope deflated as I broke out into a cool sweat. They were there, right fucking there on the highway, within touching distance of me and of the kids.

Clint wasn't in the car but that didn't mean anything. Getting my hopes up on that small point would only result in more guilt later when he was holding a gun at me. Everything else had happened; that didn't seem like such a large leap anymore.

And even if the FBI thought there were five members of the gang that, like everything else, was merely conjecture. There could be more of them; there probably was. We just didn't know it yet.

What did I do? Harrison was cheerfully grinning and waving through the back window. The kids had turned silent. It certainly wasn't a coincidence that they had pulled up alongside me. They had to have been following me. Were they going to continue following me? Probably. Did they have guns in the car? Probably.

I wasn't a cop so I didn't fit their usual pattern of targets but that didn't seem to matter anymore. I had always been their outlier, something that didn't make sense. They were crazy enough to kill me anyway, no matter who they'd set out going after.

The traffic lurched forwards and I forced myself to keep my hands on the wheel, slowly edging forwards as the traffic began moving more quickly. I just had to keep my eyes on the road. I would think of a plan and everything would be fine. I knew - 

A screech of metal was suddenly blaring in my ears as the car jolted suddenly to the right. That's what their plan was. I didn't have to turn to know that their car was pushing right up against mine, our wheels scraping together. 

They wanted to ram me off the road, with the kids in the back seat. I was in the center of town and in the middle of rush-hour traffic. Another screech of metal sounded and the kids started frantically rambling. I could feel myself beginning to panic, my breathing growing labored, but I forced myself to keep my eyes on the road and just keep driving. 

I felt like my hands were shaking. Shit. Shit. The kids were in the back. What would I do if they got hurt? What was I -

Without thinking, I grabbed my cell from the seat next to me. "Lola, honey, I need you to ring Aaron for me, okay? He's at the top of my contacts list. I need you to put it on speaker, too."

"Okay." I knew that the kids weren't stupid. They could see the car next to us, of men who were currently trying to push us off the road. They could see my strained face, my vice-like grip on the steering wheel. I knew that Lexi was probably moments away from crying, the shock of the impact more jarring than the real danger that she felt that she was in. I needed to get the kids out of this situation and I had no idea how to do that.

Harrison and his cronies weren't going to stop. I knew that. One of their own had gone to the police and they probably knew that they had a limited time left before they were cornered. Was this their last stand?

I needed to think logically. I wanted to get out the center of town in order to minimize the possibility of casualties. Harrison wasn't going to care if he ran over someone in the chase for me. But the move to a more secluded location would exponentially increase the chance of us getting hurt.

"There's no answer."

Fuck. For fuck's sake.

"Try Dave. David Rossi." Where was Aaron? Was he with Dave? What if no one answered? What would I do then?

"Lizzy? Is everything alright?" I sighed with relief, turning the corner and watching the black sedan follow me out of the corner of my eye. They were still there.

"Not really." I sounded panicked and I needed to calm down. I couldn't cause the kids to panic. I cleared my throat. "I'm in the car with the kids being chased by Harrison and the rest of the group in another car and they seeming intent on ramming me off the road. What the hell am I supposed to do?"

There was a flicker of silence, a stunned moment of panic that only added to my own. I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff and an intrusive voice inside of my head was telling me to jump, only this time I was being forced to jump by an impending battering ram of doom, all with the same sensation that my legs were now made of jelly.

"Keep driving." Dave's warm and confident voice gave me a spurt of confidence, even if the world felt like it was slipping through my fingers. "We'll follow the GPS on her cell."

"I'm trying to get somewhere quieter." I said shakily. "So there's less people they can hurt."

"You need to keep calm, Lizzy, we're on our way right now. Do you want me to stay on the phone?"

That was easy for him to say. He wasn't currently in a car with his daughters and his boyfriend's son. I swallowed the lump in my throat.

"No, it's okay. You're on your way." I firmly put my foot down on the accelerator as the traffic cleared, driving straight out of the centre of town and towards the park and the hills. Everything was going to be fine. I wasn't going to let them do this. When it was my life on the line I could cope with it, but not when it was the lives of the kids. No way.

The fuckers were messing with the wrong person.


	27. Viginti Sex

I'd been driving for minutes. I knew that because I was checking the clock on my dash every other second as though it would give any insight on another way to get out of this situation.

I'd been driving for minutes and yet it seemed like endless hours when every part of me was hyper-aware of the car that was skidding alongside me, no more than a hair's breadth away. I wanted to take my foot from the pedal, every instinct I had about driving with the kids in the back screaming, but I couldn't afford to. I was hurtling down precedingly narrower and windier roads as I sped out of the city center, now surrounded by more trees than people. It should have made me feel calmer, the knowledge that there were less bodies around me to slam into, but there were still people to injure and they were the kids and that was worse. That was a hundred times worse.

But forcing them to jump out of the car would be even more dangerous and I wasn't going to stoop to that, no matter how desperate I was feeling.

I was trying to block out every sound that wasn't in my immediate vicinity but as I swerved around a corner, the trees sprouting more thickly as I rose over a hill, I could faintly hear sirens echoing behind me. They were still a distance away, though, judging from their muted sound. My heart sank even further.

Something bumped the car forwards as I tipped over the hill onto the downward slope and I didn't have to look into the mirror to know who, or what, it was. The screech of metal against metal and scent of burning rubber was never going to leave me, I was sure of it. My hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly I was worried the plastic would snap beneath my fingers as I fought to keep control. 

Fuck this. I'd been trying to lose Harrison and his cronies in the rush hour traffic for the last half a mile but I couldn't shake them. They wanted something; me, evidently. They weren't going to stop. Fuck.

The sirens were getting louder but what if they weren't who I wanted? What if it was an ambulance for a car crash on the other side of town? What if I didn't - 

"Have y'all got your seatbelts on?" I shouted, almost wincing as I spun around a corner and the tires skidded again.

"Yes." The kids sounded more confident than I felt but I was sure this must be that childhood strength that only emerged in the direst of situations. It was remarkable, really, what a child could endure under pressure. The tires skidded again, the sound reverberating through me like chalk on a blackboard. I was heading for a sharp bend in the road, the car behind me glittering in my mirror under the strong rays of the sun. I was going to fast and too hard, with no other option unless I wanted Harrison's car to barrel into me.

Shit. 

"I need you to listen carefully, okay? I want you to put your hands over your heads and close your eyes."

"What?" That was Lexi, because she couldn't listen to instructions even when her own life depended on it. She was like me in that respect.

"Just do it. Everything's going to be fine, I promise. Just - "

My vision became completely blurred and distorted like I was trying to see through water, every sound blaring even louder into my ears. The brutal crunch of metal, the sharp insistent ringing of a cell phone, a child screaming. 

The word was spinning faster than I had ever felt it. And, all of sudden, it stopped.

My eyes felt like they were burning, a hot, sharp heat flushing my skin. The air was heavy, the clogging scent of smoke and gasoline thick in the air as I tried to move and every muscle in my body cried in protest. There was something warm and sticky trickling down my forehead, a dull pain slowly spreading behind my eyes and through the back of my skull.

"Fuck." I forced open my eyes, shrinking back against the sunlight. The windscreen was completely shattered, glass sprayed everywhere and tree branches sticking through. I'd completely missed the bend in the road, crashing through the fence and into the trees that boarded the road.

I forced myself to move again, curling my feet and pushing myself up into a sitting position. Silence was ringing in my ears, a silence that was deafening.

"Are we all okay?" My voice was croaky, as though I'd swallowed glass. I might have.

"Yes." I twisted around as much as I could, craning my neck to see their pale, frightened faces as they huddled together in the back seat. No one was hurt. Everything was fine. Everything was okay.

There was a crunch of metal behind me, kick-starting my mind again. We might be alive but we weren't alone. 

I spun back around, checking my wing mirror that was hanging precariously to the side of the car. The black sedan was parked a little way behind us, unscathed aside from a dented bumper. The doors were flung open and I watched four figures clamber out. It was Harrison, obviously, and three unfamiliar men that I recognised from the precinct. 

They paused for a moment, their voices too low for me to make out over the screeching pain that was still echoing around my brain, before starting to make their way over to our car. My entire body felt slow and numb as I shifted in my seat and reached across to the glove compartment with shaking fingers. I'd wanted to have it with me at all times, beside my bed, at the hospital, but had reasoned that it wouldn't be completely safe to have a gun in an environment where patients could sometimes become volatile.

I tightened my grip around the barrel as I righted myself in my seat, tucking it under my legs before tugging at the seatbelt that was still firmly fastened across my chest. It wouldn't move. I tugged again, harder, my fingers chafing around the material. 

Shit.

If I couldn't move, we were fish in a barrel. We were dead fish in a barrel, floating to the top. I pushed with more of my body weight, trying to use my legs that still felt like jelly. My vision was still hazy, only outlines clear to me but I could make out the silhouettes of four men walking towards us in the mirror. I tugged again. Nothing. There was no time to run or to call or to - 

The back door to the car was wrenched open and I felt my heart stop. It was Harrison, his arm casually looped over the door as his cronies stood behind him. He was grinning, a slight bulge in the back of his trousers sending me tightening my grip around the seatbelt as I tugged again. He had a gun; I had expected that. But I hadn't expected to be held hostage in my own car.

"How are we all doing?" I wanted to hit him but I couldn't reach. I didn't want to make any sudden moves, as though I was dealing with a snake. I also didn't want to scare the kids. "How about we all get out of here?"

How about no.

"Just the lad." Harrison gestured to Jack, whose wide eyes shot to me. I tried to keep my breathing steady.

"No." I desperately pulled at the seatbelt strapping me into place, feeling the slightest give at the end. "I'm not going to let you hurt them. No." Harrison grabbed Jack's arm and pulled him from the car, Jack shooting me a terrified expression. I pulled harder, frantically, the material finally coming free as I heaved open the car door.

"I need you two to stay down, okay? I'll be back in a minute. And try and call Aaron and tell him what's going on." I tucked the gun into the back of my skirt, planting both of my feet onto the floor and stepping out onto the gravel path, feeling my legs begin to buckle underneath me as I gripped onto what was left of the door. The heels on my feet didn't help in making me feel more secure so I quickly kicked them off, wiping my face with the back of my hand. I could feel the warm liquid dripping down my face, what I realised must now be blood.

Harrison was grasping onto Jack's shoulder further up the gravel path, as though taunting me with him. The other three were stood behind him, their faces emotionless. No Clint. I didn't know whether that was a good thing.

I didn't know what I was doing but I was going to have to think of something. I needed to find out what the reason for Harrison's reign of terror was and try and convince him that he was inevitably going to win anyway, for no other reason than the small person who was currently clamped to Harrison's leg and I was surprised wasn't sobbing. Had Jack endured so much trauma that this was simply another ordinary day?

I turned at the sound of tires crunching against gravel as a fleet of black of SUVs rose over the hill. I didn't dare turn completely around in case Harrison took the moment to use his gun on Jack, but I didn't need to turn to know that it was the FBI. I was under no illusion that Harrison would act out if he got scared. The SUVS were blocking both sides of the road and I saw Spencer hurriedly clamber out of one. I caught his eye, shaking my head at him. They couldn't do anything, not when Jack was in so much danger. 

I saw him quickly speaking into what I presumed was an earpiece. I couldn't see Aaron and didn't know if I wanted to. I didn't want to have to look into his face when he saw the situation his son was in. The situation I had caused his son to be in. 

"Let him go. Please." I was going to have to beg. "He hasn't done anything."

"Shut up." Harrison said with a roll of his eyes, reaching behind his back to draw out what I knew would be the gun. "I'm the one with the gun. You do as I say, not the other way around."

"Stop it, please." I could see the way Jack tensed up at the mention of a gun. I was going to have to draw my gun in a moment, if only to redress the balance but I didn't want this to push Harrison over the edge. I might be surrounded by I didn't know how many FBI agents but there was only so much they could do. "You're scaring him. You don't want him, you want me." For a reason I still didn't understand. Did he really want to use me as a bargaining chip against Clint? Was Clint the one who had turned himself in to the police?

My heart stopped beating the moment Harrison raised his gun, levelling it to Jack's temple. I could see his tears now, hear his quiet sniffles that accelerated the paranoia that was flooding my already dulled system. My hands were around my gun, the shaking of my fingers because of shock rather than fear. I wasn't scared of Harrison, or of shooting him, not anymore. I was scared of someone getting hurt in all of my mess.

"Clint doesn’t care about Jack." I said quietly, meeting Harrison's conceited gaze. "He doesn’t even know Jack exists. He's not mine." The words felt like dirt in my mouth. I had to say them. Everyone was counting on me.

Harrison didn't falter; his hand unmoving. I needed to change my angle. Was Aaron staring at me, right now, wondering what the hell I was doing with his son?

"What I don't understand is why you want to hurt me. I'm not a cop." There was silence, complete stillness aside from the rustling of leaves. I quickly assessed the other three men, all of whom I assumed must have concealed weapons on them as Harrison had. Great.

"One of our members pulled a stupid stunt and needs reminding what's expected of him." Harrison said slowly, malice sneaking into his voice. "I think you know him. I narrowed my eyes. "Clint."

Whatever expression my face naturally morphed into, Harrison clearly found it amusing because he broke into a wide smirk. Dick.

"Apparently you go way back?" I nodded. So it had been Clint who had gone to the police. Did that make me feel any better? Not really. His 'noble' deed didn't help me now, nor did it help Jack. "I suppose those two in the back are the results of their relationship?" Harrison waved his gun towards the car and I felt my stomach clench.

"Yes." I didn't appreciate his words but I knew now wasn't the right time to call him out on it. "But we split up years ago. Targeting me will get you nothing. He clearly doesn't care about them because if he cared about them, he wouldn't have left." The truth was a much more complicated matter but I didn't have the time, nor the desire, to explain the intricacies to him.

"And yet the bastard still went to the cops." Harrison said with a sigh and a smile. He didn't believe me. He was seeing plot-holes in my story that weren't even there. "So this is his punishment for that."

I raised my gun, widening my stance trying to ignore the look of terror on Jack's face. "I'm not kidding. Let him go." Harrison scoffed again, staring me down. One of the men tried to speak but Harrison silenced him with the wave of a hand. I held his gaze for another moment, barely breathing, before Harrison rolled his eyes and pushed Jack forwards. Without instruction, Jack scampered over to me and latched himself onto my side. I gently pushed him behind me. I locked eyes with Harrison, my mouth hanging open, as a mass of FBI agents suddenly swarmed forwards.

The blood from my forehead was beginning to obscure my vision but there wasn't time for me to do anything about it. I might be feeling dizzy and weak but there was no way I was letting Jack from out behind me, even if that resulted in a bullet in my stomach


	28. Viginti Septem

I could finally breathe. Harrison and his cronies were being apprehended and all I had to do was ignore the obscene threats that Harrison was hurtling in my direction. I'd been called a bitch so many other times in my life that what was one more?

It was over. It was finally over. Just saying it didn't feel real.

I could feel Jack shaking under my fingers as I gently ran my fingers through his hair and cuddled him close. I had felt sure that I was going to faint but now wasn't the time. I just had to focus on making sure that everyone was alright, that no one was hurt, that no one had been hurt because a group had wanted me - 

My head shot up at the sound of yelling, catching sight of a flash of rapid movement. It was Harrison, kicking out at an FBI agent and smashing his face against a tree, flailing in a frenzy as he dragged agent after agent with him. I moved without thinking, clutching the gun tightly in my hand and aiming for Harrison's leg. Jack's warmth was seeping into my side. I squeezed the trigger, Harrison's eyes meeting mine and boring into my skull so forcefully I knew that I was going to have his expression scored into my mind forever.

I watched him drop, the gun in my hands faintly smoking. I hadn't thought, I had just moved because I'd had to. 

The kids were safe, as was everyone else. The group had wanted to hurt me in order to get back at Clint for going to the cops. But Harrison must have known that his time was up. It had been a desperate grab at power and an attempt to discipline Clint, for some reason.

That was over now. Christ, it felt good to know that. It felt so fucking good.

I turned slightly, wrapping both arms around Jack as I made eye contact with the rest of the team who had now rejoined together. I was deliberately not looking at Aaron, instead focusing on the surprised tilt of Spencer's eyebrows. They should know by now that I can handle herself if needed. That was what growing up in Oklahoma did to a person. The shooting culture definitely had its pros and cons but I hadn't cared about anything political in the spur of the moment.

I swallowed tightly, my throat as dry as sandpaper as I slowly walked over to the car and forced myself to smile. Lola and Lexi were both curled up against each other, tears rolling down Lex's face. I held out my hand, taking her tiny palm in my own as I helped her out, kissing the top of her head as she wrapped her arms around my neck. Jack seemed to be much calmer now and the reality that he had dealt with events like this before was truly horrifying. He should never have had to deal with the death of a parent, much less the murder. No child should. The fact that he had didn't make me feel any better, either.

"I didn’t mean what I said before, Jack." I helped Lola out of the car, giving Jack a wide and honest smile. "I do care about you, very much. Okay?" He nodded but the guilt still felt low in my stomach. "Everyone's okay now. Well, aside from the car. But that's not important. We're all safe now, okay? I promise." I wanted to say something else but I had to swallow my words for a moment because my head was spinning and I swore my legs were slowly decomposing underneath me. I wiped my face again, a smear of blood staining the back of my hand. 

Now that the adrenaline was beginning to fade, I could feel every jolt and throb of my body all the more intensely. Soon enough, I would be able to sit down and a have doughnut and the world would stop spinning. Hopefully.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard someone calling my name. I looked around, expecting to see Aaron's ruggedly handsome figure approaching or another member of the team. I narrowed my eyes on a man standing in front of one of the police cars. It took me a moment to focus in on him, given the shakiness of my vision, but the moment that I did so I really did nearly hit the floor in shock.

It was Clint.

His wrists were clamped in handcuffs, his hair a little longer and shaggier but he was the same. The same sparkling blue eyes. The same cheek bones and soft jaw.

Fuck.

"Daddy?" Lola whispered it so quietly I almost didn't hear her but I could clearly detect the feeling of guilt in her voice. My heart broke a little at the fact she felt guilty to recognise her own father. I had done something staggeringly wrong if that really was the case. Had anyone realised that I had spotted him?

"Are you alright on your own for a minute?" I had to go and speak to him. I couldn't pass up this opportunity to gain answers to all of my questions, even when if the kids were still looking slightly shaken. If that made me an awful parent then then I was just going to have to accept that.

"Can I go and speak to him?" Lola's voice was quiet. I had to face reality and the handcuffs clamped around his wrists were making it very hard not to. He was staring intently at Lola and Lexi, as though to check whether they were real.

"I don't know whether you'll be allowed, honey." I said slowly, crouching down a little. Lola frowned, crossing her arms and pushing her hair over her shoulders. Some of her mannerisms resembled mine so closely that it was laughable sometimes.

"Why?"

"Because he's kind of a criminal, even if he did turn himself in." Lola nods, smiling slightly as I straightened up. "Okay." That was more for me than for them as I turned and began walking over to Clint, trying not to stare into his eyes but failing miserably. He was in cuffs, so the police must see him as some sort of threat, no matter what information he'd divulged to them.

What did I say? What did he say? How could we start up a conversation after everything that had happened? Not just after the last few years but the last few weeks.

"Hey." It was a safe bet, one that didn't require any thought. He nodded, smiling slightly. I wanted to lean forwards and brush back his fringe.

"Hey." He replied. I felt as though I had gone back in time by seventeen years and was suddenly back in high school. But this wasn't our first meeting. It was foolish to pretend it was. "I guess this must feel strange."

"A little."

"Especially seeing as one of us has been arrested." I saw Clint gulp as I bit my lip. I'd ran out of words. I had nothing. "I'm the reason that they came after you. And the kids." I shrugged. It was the truth but Clint was sporting a look so guilty, so filled with self-hatred that it completely replaced any anger I had been feeling.

"They seem pretty crazy." I said slowly. "Maybe they would have done it anyway." He nodded, looking down at his sneakers for a moment. Could he see through how easily I had lied and how I was trying to save his feelings? Or did he honestly believe me?

I didn't know. I had spent so long imagining this conversations in my head that now he was here I didn't know what to say.

"I'm really sorry, you know. Really sorry."

"For what?" I snapped, my voice still low. Were Lola and Lexi still watching our exchange? Probably. "The murders or leaving us?"

"I didn't - " He paused, squeezing his eyes shut before reopening them, holding my gaze firm. "I didn't hurt any of them, Lizzy. I swear on my life. I got in with them before all this happened but he I participate in it, I promise. I know that that doesn't make me innocent and I should have gone to the cops sooner but - if it means anything to you then -" 

"I'll have to think about it." This was what I wanted, wasn't it? He hadn't hurt anyone, or at least that was what he promised. If he still cared about me, even a fraction, then he wouldn't lie to my face. He had acknowledged that being a bystander didn't make him guilt-free. It never would because people were dead, innocent people. I supposed admitting he should have done more was a start.

I watched Clint's eyes drift to somewhere beyond me shoulder as his face relaxed. I didn't have to turn to know who he was looking at. "They've grown so much." I nodded. I wanted to say that that was what happened with the passage of time but I swallowed my anger. I didn't want to look into his wide, ashamed blue eyes again.

"Lexi doesn't really remember much but Lola...she remembers. She was really upset. She still misses you, I think." In the early days I had felt almost resentful towards Lola she missed him and didn't feel angry about what he'd done. She still idolized him and I thought she'd forgotten that he was the one who had left her. She hadn't, but that didn't mean she couldn't be sad. It took me a while to truly understand that.

I watched him swallow harshly, his eyes beginning to glaze over. "I'm sorry." He repeated. "I'm so sorry, Lizzy."

"I know." I didn't know at all. I had a hurried conversation with him that I had spent the majority of being quiet. But I only had to look into his face to know that he truly did feel for what he'd done. He'd never been able to hide or conceal his emotions. How he'd been in drama club I had no idea.

"Who's that man?" Clint said with a frown. "They seem comfortable with him." I turned to see Aaron's figure crouched down in front of the kids and while I was stood too far away to make out his words, Lexi was giggling. I turned back to Clint, a sudden bout of anxiety brewing in my stomach. Why was I so nervous about telling my ex about my current boyfriend.

"That's Aaron. He's my boyfriend." I said the words quickly, the sounds jumbling together in my throat.

"Right." Clint's voice was flat but he was smiling.

"The little boy, Jack, is his son."

"He looks terrifying." Clint said with a grin. "Aaron, not Jack." I found myself smirking, taking in the tension running through Aaron's whole frame. He did look rather scary, especially because of his bulletproof vest and dark glasses.

"He's not, really. He's not FBI. That's how they all are." This was what I wanted: the ability just to talk with him about anything, like the friends we had been. I wanted all those years of knowing him and caring about him not to be in vain.

"Mr. Summers?" I jolted as a police officer appeared at our side, a stern expression on her face. "We need to take you back to the precinct now." The cuffs around his wrists hadn't disappeared in the time we had been talking. He was still under arrest.

"Okay." He met my eyes and shrugged a little. "I guess this is it, then. At least for now. But I want to keep in touch with you after the trial, whatever happens. I want to be a part of their lives again, if you'll let me." I felt myself nodding but his words weren't sinking in as the police officer took him by the elbow and led him into another car. 

He wanted to be a part of their lives again. The girls lives more specifically but he wanted to be there. Everything felt numb. I could feel my feet staggering against the ground as I placed one foot in front of the other. My head was pounding, bright lights flashing in front of my vision.

I hit something hard, pain spiraling through my head as I squeezed my eyes shut. There were shouts echoing somewhere above me, something hard digging into my ribs that was making it difficult to breathe. God, my head felt funny -  
***

The first thing I knew were the bright, horrible lights flashing in my eyes. I squinted back against them, blinking furiously until I could make out the scene in front of me. Jack was sat opposite me, a lollipop in his clutched hand and a blanket carefully placed around his shoulders. Lola and Lexi were next to him, Lexi's eyes closed as she slept leaning against Lola's arm. Jack's eyes light up as they he noticed I was awake and he grinned.

"You're awake!" The sound of his voice reverberated through my body, making the pounding in my head even denser. I tried to push myself into a sitting position but, as soon as I started moving, a pair of hands were on my shoulders pushing me back down.

"Ma'am, you need to stay still." It was a medic, I realised, and the room that I was in was actually the back of an ambulance. "You're bound to have some pain in your head because we had to stitch the wound up. You've lost quite a lot of blood and you need to relax."

"Got it." I remembered the blood dripping down my face. That would explain the feeling that I'd been hit by a truck. "Are you all okay?"

"We're fine." Lola and Jack chorused and I forced myself to smile despite the pain. 

"Good. Let me guess, I fainted?"

"Yep." Lola leaned forward to take my hand and squeezed it slightly as I rolled onto my side and curled my legs up towards me trying not to wince. "You did. What did Daddy say?" It took me a moment to realise what she was referring to. Clint. She meant Clint.

"He said that he missed you a lot and he thinks about you all the time." I said slowly, licking my dry cracked lips.

"Did he kill those people?" My eyes widened slightly as Lola stared back at me. She certainly knew more information than she was letting on. Had she seen it on the news?

"He said he didn't."

"Do they believe him?"

"Maybe" I admitted. "Probably. He also said that after his trial he wants to be around a bit more." Lola started grinning but after a moment, her smile fell.

"He won't be coming home though, will he?"

"No sweetie, sorry. But maybe he can come round for tea sometimes." The fact that I was even considering this, that this possibility had even entered my head, seemed like a dream. I didn't want to get her hopes up, just yet, but it was hard not to. Clint might be in prison for years; I didn't know what was going to happen. "We'll just have to see what happens."

That was always the case wasn't it?


	29. Viginti Octo

I took the next day off work, partly because I had been ordered by both the paramedics who had been on the scene and because I couldn't walk in a straight line without feeling as though I was going to be sick. I hated talking days off work, something that was so obviously clear in my workaholic personality, but even I had to admit I couldn't face a full day of work. Other than having an incessant ringing in my head and in my ears, the stitches were really beginning to piss me off. 

An unexpected bonus of staying off work was having the house to myself which made a nice change, even if the only thing I wanted to do was clean and tidy the areas that I knew weren't clean and tidy. But, I'd also been told by the paramedics not to stand up for long periods of time and I don't think bending over the bath tub scrubbing would help me to get any better.

So, instead, I watched movies and TV shows and stayed in my pajamas and ate a shit load of pop tarts, leftover mac and cheese and some kale crisps that I found in the back of the cupboard that I'm sure Aimee must have put there at some point because I have never willingly bought something that tastes like manufactured cardboard.

Kelly, Penelope, Aaron, Mom and Dad had been continually ringing me throughout the day, repetitively in that order,  
and asking whether I was okay and I was seriously thinking about setting up a group chat with them just so I could tell them all at the same, once and for all, and then get back to watching my shows.

It seemed that, while I spent most of my days working inside a hospital, I had been missing some ridiculously good looking people who were on crime shows. Currently, while I was midway through a bag of jolly ranchers, my obsession was NCIS but mainly DiNozzo and his ridiculously handsome smiling face. I could almost ignore the pounding in my head and the tiredness that was clinging to my body.

The more I thought about DiNozzo, the less I thought about Clint. That was what I was going with.

I had sporadically taking short naps throughout the day, through no real desire of my own. I knew that a hard enough bang on the head could seriously mess up all kinds of functions in the body but I hadn't realised just how exhausted I would feel. Maybe I could just do with another nap. Just one more and then I'd be fine...

 

***  
By the time Aaron came home with the kids in tow, I'd had another three short naps and had got through another four episodes of NCIS. He brought some burgers that Mom had forced him to take home, claiming that she had just made a couple but how she would ever make five extra burgers without realising I had no idea. But I couldn't afford to complain because they had tasted amazing and I was in no frame of mind to cook. I'd forgotten about some of the simple things, some of things that had flown from my mind in the weeks of panic that had been building up inside my head since the mention of Clint's name.

Now, I was covered in blankets and a hot water bottle because whenever I wasn't feeling well the only thing that Lexi ever did was pile blankets onto me, as though that would make me feel better. It did, mentally, because it was such a cute gesture but did little to physically improve my condition. Right now, I was moments away from overheating but I didn't have the heart or the energy to move any of them. Aaron had saved her from further overheating by suggesting that he and the kids make a blanket fort instead and possibly even watch a movie before bedtime.

It was a genius idea, not only because it distracted the kids from the fact that I wasn't feeling well and that they'd been in a car crash yesterday, but because it was one I had found extremely attractive watching him carry out. I wasn't aware that he possessed undivulged structural knowledge about the best way to go about building a blanket fort. I was involved with the logistics, rather than the physical building process, because engineering was after all science even if it was one of my least favourite parts of science.

The whole thing also involved a lot of Aaron bending over and I enjoyed watching his muscles ripple under his skin and...other parts of him.

Was that weird? No? I was delirious, anyway, so couldn't be held fully accountable for anything that I happened to be thinking.

I closed my eyes for a moment to cover the blaring light as an argument broke out over which cushions should be used to build the 'moat' that their fort needed to defend itself.

I tilted my head to the side, slightly, cracking my neck and feeling a dull wave of pain shoot through my head. Car crashes really were the worst. Not only did I now have a hire car until my insurers paid up but I was also beginning to feel like aliens were trying to steal my brain.

Vanilla-scented aliens, because I was fairly certain Aaron had lit one of the candles in the hallway. Did I really smell that bad? Or was it just something to stimulate the senses?

I cracked open one eye as the kids began cheering and rushing into the kitchen. Their fort, constructed of my best fluffy throws, cushions and dining table chairs, was now deemed to be a liveable structure and now it was time to get the snacks and try to sit within it, without knocking the whole thing over.

I was sure the fact that it had been constructed with a perfect view of the TV screen was an active decision on Aaron's part to stop me drooling over NCIS. I would get him back for that later, when I felt I could think of enough sarcastic quips to warrant that conversation. 

I fully opened my eyes as I felt someone grip onto my hands and looked up to Lola and Lexi tugging me towards the fort, with eager looks in their eyes.

"Come on Mommy!" I tried to pry my hands away but they were surprisingly strong and the determined, almost ferocious look on Lex's little face held me captive.

"Do I have to?" I groaned, knowing that I sounded exactly like them when I told them to do their homework. 

"Yes!" They ordered, tugging at my hands again and I sighed in defeat. I stifled my whine as I pushed myself up into a sitting position and sank to the floor, shuffling over to them and stifling the whine that was building up in my throat. I hadn't dared look at the bruises on my skin this morning but I could feel the full brunt of them now. I settled back on a cushion, running a hand through my hair. I felt two warm arms gently wrap themselves around my stomach and pull me towards them, settling my head against Aaron's chest as he kissed the top of my head. 

The kids were debating which film to watch and whether sweet and toffee popcorn were the same thing. We were allowed a moment just to cuddle.

"Are you feeling okay?" I wanted to nod but knew it would make my head hurt even more.

"I'm just a bit bleary-eyed." I said with a tired smile.

"Will you be okay for work tomorrow? You should have another day off if you can't handle it..."

"Kelly's coming to pick her up in the morning." I said, rolling onto my back to look up at him. Kelly had been much the same and protesting that if she came to the house and I looked like shit then she wasn't going to let me in her car and instead order me to bed. Aaron raised an eyebrow and I sighed. "And if I'm not okay then she can fall asleep in the breakroom. I'm sure Evan will let me."

"That sounds like a great idea."

"Will you be doing the same?" I asked with a grin. As if Aaron would ever fall asleep in the breakroom.

"I've got paperwork to do."

"I think you're having an affair with this mysterious paperwork." I said firmly. "Considering the amount of time you spend doing it, it would make sense." I nearly snorted at my unintentional double-entendre. Was doing it just a British euphemism?

"It would never work out." Aaron continued. "She's dull and boring and doesn't laugh at my jokes."

"That's because your jokes are crap." Aaron narrowed his eyes, a smirk slipping onto his face as he leaned forwards and tapped me on the nose.

"I'm not sure I like you with a concussion. I need someone to laugh at me."

"We are laughing at you."

"I'm going to move if you keep being mean to me." He deadpanned and I immediately snuggled deeper into his arms, drinking in his warmth and his firm grip.

"No." I said stubbornly, wrapping my arms around him. "Stay." Aaron smiled, a smile so tender that I felt my insides begin to flutter. If the kids weren't so close and I wasn't still hurting, then I would be sat in Aaron's lap and kissing him like my life depended on it. But this was almost as good, with the kids laughing at the stupid jokes on the comedy they'd picked, the scent of popcorn and vanilla floating through the air and Aaron's warmth soaking into my back as he interlaced his fingers with my own.

Yeah. This was pretty perfect.


	30. Viginti Novem

I had been resisting the urge to throw everybody out of the house, slip out of my dress and replace them with my pyjamas for the last hour and a half but I knew, deep down, that no matter how much I wanted to I couldn't do that to Aimee or Tim. Ever since the crash, even if it had only been days ago it felt like a lifetime, I'd been feeling more tired and groggy than ever and the last thing I wanted to be doing on a Friday evening when I'd had to force myself through work was to be hosting a party.

It also didn't help that I'd been replaying the events of the crash on repeat inside my brain and wondering whether there was any way I could have handled the situation differently without possibly scaring the kids for life.

My overly tidy mind was also slowly having a meltdown with the amount of decorations and streamers that were everywhere and even the carefully curated playlist created by Aimee that was playing wasn't calming me. I had spent most the evening so far watching her flutter around the room like a glittery and black leathered fairy and shouting at Kelly whenever she disrupted he snacks that I had so carefully laid out on the coffee table.

I didn't entirely mind having to spend my Friday evening overseeing my younger's sister's attempts at showing a boy that she's crazy about it because it was so unbelievably obvious what her feelings were. I was praying that one of them would make a move before the end of the night or I was going to have to step in and try something and that would take more energy than I had left.

Luckily, Aimee had decided that their meal of the evening would be take-out pizza so I didn't have to cook anything. As well as this, there were more than enough people who had invaded my house to play around the kids, meaning I had been able to snuggle into Penelope's shoulder for a solid twenty minutes on the sofa.

I still wasn't sure just how it had come about that the team had ended up being invited to my house on the same evening as Tim's party but I didn't mind because I liked spending time with them. It meant that I got to see Penelope, one of my oldest friends, laughing and joking with a team of people that she clearly cared about and got to work with.

I loved them all being here, I really did, but I definitely hadn't been stood around the sink for the last fifteen minutes cleaning the glasses that I couldn't put in the dishwasher as a way to avoid conversation with anyone. The warm, soapy water was therapeutic to dip my hands into and the glasses didn't expect me to answer them. Aaron was too busy being dragged into conversation by either my mom or Dave to notice how little socialising I was doing with everyone and I was grateful for that. I didn't think I could properly explain to anyone just how tired I felt.

"Thanks so much for doing this, Lizzy." I startled, a voice appearing at my shoulder, and I turned to see Tim, clutching a bottle of beer and grinning. That was another reason why I couldn't justify throwing everyone out onto the doorstep, because Tim genuinely seemed like a really nice guy and a good friend. It also helped that I, and I was pretty sure everyone else, could see how often he and Aimee stared at each other from across the room.

If I could facilitate their relationship then I was winning at being a big sister. I was also failing at being a health professional because every ounce of energy had been sucked from my body.

"It's no trouble." I said with a smile, "Really. Aimee knows that she's going to have to make it up to me somehow and I can use that as a comeback the next time she tries to worm her way out of something." Tim smirked, running a hand through his hair. I could certainly see what Aimee saw in him because he was very hot, in a cute boy-next-door kind of way. Especially when he was wearing a vibrant teal shirt that contrasted so perfectly with - 

"Wine, Lizzy?" I looked up at the sudden mention of my name, seeing Aaron approaching and brandishing a bottle of wine in his hands. He also happened to be wearing one of my favourite navy shirts but, knowing him, he might have simply picked it out of the drawer because it was the first one his hand touched. I shook my head; if I had any alcohol I was going to fall asleep standing up and then probably be sick. No one wanted that. "Tim?"

"Go on then." He said with a smile and a nod, as Aaron reached for a wine glass by the sink. "If I'm not allowed to drink on my birthday, then when am I?" Aaron reached over me to pass the wine glass before pouring one for himself. Was that why Aaron had been talking so animatedly this evening? And why he had been catching my eye every other minute wearing an expression that made my knees feel physically weak?

"Jack seems very taken with you." Aaron said with a smirk and Tim smirked, bringing the glass to his lips.

"Jack, Lola and Lexi have been helping me with my fantasy soccer team."

"Right." I cast my eyes over to wear Lexi was half-lying across Penelope's lap. Lexi hated soccer and that meant the only reason she was helping was either because she liked Tim as much as everyone else or because Aimee was bribing her with something. It wasn't hard to think it was the former. Tim could win over anyone.

"How long have you guys been living together? Your house is pretty amazing." Had Aimee told him? Clearly not, but then again I supposed it was rather a strange conversation to have with a guy about your sister and her boyfriend's living arrangements.

"It's Lizzy's house, actually. We're only here temporarily." Aaron said, gesturing towards me. Technically it was only temporary but something about his words still wounded me slightly. It had to be the tiredness that was making me so sensitive.

"Any news on the part that you need for your boiler?" I asked and Aaron sighed.

"It's in the state, apparently." He said with a roll of his eyes, "Which could mean absolutely anything. I'm definitely complaining to the company when it's sorted because it's taking much longer than it should be. Not that we mind staying here - " He added quickly, his expression growing sincere and I smiled. I knew that he meant it. "You've all been amazing letting us stay but it's not fair for us to be in your hair all the time."

"What if I want you to be in my hair?" I said with a smirk, watching Aaron drain his glass before his eyes slid to mine. I could see that he was dying to say something further but didn't feel he could because of Tim. Could I arrange a problem that only Aimee and Tim could fix? That would bring them together and would also give me and Aaron a moment alone to -

"Timothy!" I raised an eyebrow at Penelope's energetic voice echoing through the room and Tim looked over his shoulder. "I need you to come and sit. I want to question you and make sure you're fit to date my protegee." I watched Tim smirk, already walking over and I had no doubt that was because Aimee was perched at the end of the sofa with a bottle of cider in her hand, looking gorgeous in an outfit only she could create, and beaming at something Lola was murmuring to her. 

I turned back towards the sink, watch Aaron lean against the counter and his arm lightly brushing up against mine. I felt his eyes on me for a moment as I lifted a plate out of the suds and placed it on the rack to dry a little. "You okay?"  
"I'm fine." I said, knowing that the question had to come at some point. "Other than the stitches in her head which are beginning to itch like mad, I'm fine."

"Aren't they hoping to get them out on Monday?" I nodded, even if I was partly dreading going down to St. Addison's minor injuries unit.

"I'm just a little tired." I said slowly, my voice low. We'd promised to tell each other the truth and I'd been making a pretty shocking job of it lately. I was going to have to try to be better.

"I can think of something to wake you up." Aaron's warm hands began to run over my arm and I bit my lip, looking up at him through my lashes, shaking my head.

"Is this what a young Aaron Hotchner was like?" I said with a smile, relishing in the way my skin felt under his touch. I tilted my head to the side. "No, I forgot. You spent all your time inside with your stamps."

"You're so cruel." He reached forwards to gently intertwine his fingers with my own and I stepped forward to drink in the heat from his skin. I couldn't deny that I was tired, even though I loved being close to him. Which of those two competing feelings was I going to let win?

"I said I'm tired." I said with a child-like whine, a wide smile forcing itself onto my face as Aaron leaned forwards so that his nose was brushing against mine and his warm, steady breathing kissed my face.

"Do you want me to stop?" His voice was barely audible as he leaned forward and started pressing careful kisses across my neck and collarbones, while his hands gently massaged my hips through my dress. I let out an involuntary gasp, reaching to grasp onto his wrists to feel more of his skin under my touch. No, I didn't want him to stop. That was the very furthest thing from my mind. If anything, I wanted him to go faster and use his wonderful mouth in the ways that he'd only begun to show me the other day - 

"Why do so many of our more interesting conversations happen by the sink?" I breathed, feeling his lips curl into a smirk against my skin.

"That really is the question, isn't it?" God, his voice. I could feel every inch of my skin growing flushed and sensitive, my breasts beginning to ache and a flutter of butterflies sitting low in my stomach.

I was tempted to reach for my cell and text Saffron that I had fulfilled my promise to her. But, to do that, I'd have to move away from Aaron and that was the very last thing on my mind right now.


	31. Triginta

Aaron volunteered to take the girls to their ballet classes, something that I greatly appreciated and found quite sexy, and Jack went with them because there was the promise of stopping at the store on the way home. I stayed at home to tidy everything up because the mess that had been caused last night was making me feel anxious. I hadn't managed to do any last night, mainly because people had only started leaving around midnight and Aaron and I had been pretty eager to get to...other things, as opposed to cleaning.

Not that I minded, really. I would much rather be in bed with Aaron than cleaning up my kitchen. There wasn't even a decision to be made there. Only now, the following morning, my hair was a mess from Aaron running his hands through it and I felt like I was wading through crisp packets and beer bottles just to find my carpet again. I was dressed in a pair of leggings and a blue t-shirt, fluffy slippers on my feet because socks were too much effort for me right now. Everything seemed to be too much effort for me right now.

And, to make matters better, Kelly had decided to drop by on her way back from the gym and help me tidy up. At least that was what she claimed; I thought it was more to see how worse for wear I was this morning, only it was nothing to do with alcohol and everything to with sex.

I couldn't complain, though. With everything that had happened with Clint, I felt that I didn't really manage to spend a lot of time with her and the time that I did spend with her I mostly spent moping and not feeling like myself. So this was perfect - cleaning and singing to the music Kelly had blasting through my speakers and just existing together.

Kelly had decided on Drake's latest album for our soundtrack which was definitely not my first choice but something I could roll with. At the moment, she was upstairs again brushing her teeth again with the toothbrush only she used in my cupboard because apparently her mouth still tasted like cardboard. I was surprised that she was even awake at 11 in the morning after drowning her sorrows in cider because Samuel wasn't able to make the party.

In a way, I was glad that he hadn't because things would have been very awkward, but I'd to ask and sadly he'd had something planned already. 

I looked up at the sound of footsteps, collecting another handful of crisp packets and throwing them into the bin bag. I had known that there had been a lot of people over last night, and there'd been a lot of food, but I hadn't realised just how much.

"Your guest bathroom is more peppy than I am." Kelly said with a smirk, tugging her fingers through her hair and stretching out her arms. When she'd first arrived, she'd been barely been able to walk in a straight line and I had no idea how she'd been able to actually drive over here without causing a crash.

"It's not my fault that that water you said you were going to drink turned into vodka." I said pointedly, throwing another bin bag in Kelly's direction. She sighed, dejectedly catching it in her hands.

"It is because you're the one who put the drinks out."

"Technically, Aaron did it."

"But I feel weird shouting at him because he's a federal agent."

"And yet you doesn't feel weird shouting at me? I'm a member of the medical profession."

"No, because I've known you for a freaking long time and have seen you half naked and covered in beer and - " I sharply let the bin close, turning to glare at Kelly. That particular evening had been very eventful and one that I wasn't sure I ever wanted to think about again, much less when I was tired and still got bouts of dizziness and was ready to tear the stitches out of my head.

"Are you implying that you want to see Aaron naked?"

"No!" She said quickly, her mouth sharpening into a wide grin. "I'd want to see Samuel naked."

"I think I'd grasped that." I said dryly, watching Kelly pout in response. "It's not like I haven't had it shoved down my throat every day at work."

"I think you'll find that we're being very tasteful in our flirtation."

"And you just used the word flirtation to try and distract attention away from the fact that you're blushing like a tomato." I said pointedly and Kelly threw a crisp packet in my direction. Then another, as she slid up next to me, her face burning crimson and stuck out her tongue. I knew I was right; I also knew that her feelings for Samuel went deeper than a petty crush. 

A few moments of comfortable silence sat between us as we picked through another bin bag to sort through what could be recycled and what couldn't. Even when I was slightly hungover and burning for Aaron to return, I could still think of about the environment.

"Is it weird spending time with Aaron knowing that he might have to jet off at any moment?" Kelly suddenly said, looking up at me. I paused, my hands crushing a crisp packet into a ball.

"I haven't really thought about it." Kelly rolled her eyes, instantly looking skeptical.

"You've been dating for nearly 8 months and you're telling me that you haven't thought about it. Or rather, you're trying not to think about it."

I didn't answer, gnawing at my lip as though it was one of Aaron's speciality protein bars that had the texture of cardboard. Kelly leaned closer and rested her head on my shoulder, her warmth sinking into me. I sighed.

"I can't change when he has to go away and so I shouldn't waste my energy doing something that I can't change. He has to go and I know it."

"And?" Kelly prompted, her knowing eyes staring deep into mine and I felt somewhere deeper, down into my soul. That was how well she knew me.

"And yet I still hate it and feel shit about it and wish that he wasn't in the FBI sometimes." My words came out jumbled, my mind running quicker than my mouth, and they were too quick for me to stop. I needed to stop thinking about my words so much and just say what I felt. Kelly wasn't blind or stupid; she could probably tell that I would sometimes be in lower spirits when Aaron wasn't in town. That didn't make me weak or pathetic. That was just usual when someone was apart from their boyfriend when they went off to risk their life.

Wasn't it?

"And it's even weirder because he's currently staying in my house." I added, watching Kelly's forehead crinkle.

"Currently? Isn't it a permanent thing?"

"He's only staying till his heating gets fixed and because of someone shitty distributor it's not here yet." I said, repeating words I had repeated in my head a hundred times. Kelly's expression turned sincere, then sympathetic as she reached out to take my hand that was shaking the remnants of a bottle of a beer down the sink.

"Do you want him to go?" Her eyes flickered to mine. I felt like my throat was going to close up but I wasn't going to swallow my words again.

"No." That was the truth. "But I can't make him stay. I can't - " My words were silenced by the vibrating of my cell on top of the counter. I reached for it, seeing Dad's name flash up on the screen and a beginning of a text.

"Who is it?"

"My Dad."

"What's he saying?" My mouth began to curl into a smirk at her nosiness before my eyes drifted across his words. I felt my face blanch, an anxiety instantly starting to ripple in my stomach.

"Oh shit."

"What's up?"

"My grandad's coming to town tomorrow." Why was he even bothering? Why couldn't he just stay in Oklahoma on his farm and - 

"Why?" Kelly asked and I struggled for a response. I settled on the most accurate.

"Because he's a dick."


	32. Triginta Unum

Everyone can relate to being forced to see relatives that you'd really rather punch in the face, can't they?

I tried to relax my posture in the stiff, high-backed chair but every part of my body felt tense. I was sat at my parent's dining table, the kids sat next to me and Aaron across the table. I felt as though I was sat directly in the path of the sun and the rays were scorching at my skin. I could feel a deep, unresolved anger bubbling within me; a type of anger that only family members could bring up. Those particular family members who had tormented me as a child and now, as an adult, I had to pretend to be civil to.

It wasn't as thought it was a family member that I could completely ignore the existence of, either. It would have been better if it was an obscure cousin that I didn't to care about. But it was my grandfather, Dad's Dad, who still lived and owned the family farm in Oklahoma. It would be Dad's farm soon, I was sure of it. We didn't have to worry about him leaving it to any of us. There was no chance of that.

It wasn't hard to tell that the atmosphere was frosty because Mom had hardly spoken for the entire duration of the meal. Normally, she would speak at a hundred miles a minute if she was feeling nervous or awkward but today there was only silence. She must have tried that last night with Dad and, by this morning, had given up. It wasn't a secret that the only person who could bare to be in the same room as him was Dad and now Mom was taking out his arrival on him, glaring at him out of the corner of her eye whilst quickly eating the roast. It wasn't fair to take it out on Dad. It wasn't his fault that his father was suck an ass.

The kids were quietly talking and I almost wanted to tell them to stop. I could see his watery eyes darting over them, no doubt questioning who Jack was and coming to all sorts of awful conclusions in his mind. But I wasn't about to stop them from doing something just because he was here. 

I'd deliberately chosen to wear a blue, off-the-shoulder-cami not only because it was boiling but because he was one of those people who thought every part of a woman's body was scandalous and doing something knowing it would annoy him was how I got my kicks. Aaron had dressed up for the occasion, in shirt, slacks and his best pair of shoes, with the clear intention of trying to impress my grandfather. I didn't want anyone to have to impress such a sniveling old git.

I knew that he had been born in the 1930s and it had been a different time and whatever but that was no excuse for being a horrible man and living up to every redneck stereotype that shad been attached to southerners by the media.

I had successful job, was unmarried and had two kids so I definitely wasn't the favorite grandchild. I didn't think he actually had a favorite because Joe was bi and Aimee was dyslexic, or "plain stupid" to quote his words, and wanted to be an actress which he saw as being a "whore", also to quote his words.

Since the moment I'd stepped through the front door and been forced to smile in his direction, I had been dying to say that I had had sex two nights ago with a man I wasn't married or engaged to just to see how he would react.

Apparently, Dad had quickly murmured before I start shouting in his face, he had wanted to see his grandchildren and great-grandchildren and he couldn't say no to that. Dad might have the nicest will in the world but he also wasn't stupid; he knew how much money his father was dangling in all of our faces and how we were practically waiting for him to kick the bucket at this point.

He was eighty-five. It couldn't be too long...

"So Lizanne - " He also happened to be one of the only people who called me Lizanne, which made me feel like a child again who was about to be shouted at or have a broom thrown in her direction. "I don't see a wedding ring..."

I swallowed the chunk of potato in my throat, slowing raising my gaze. He looked exactly like Dad, thin and lanky but shrunken due to his age. His skin seemed permanently golden from working in the fields all day, to the point where it looked almost leathery and as though you could tear it off in strips.

"That's because I'm not married." I said flatly, with a smile. You would think that much was obvious. I pitied Joe and Aimee so much, - they had had to spend the last twelve hours living under the same roof as him and biting their tongues whenever they wanted to speak.

I saw his eyes trail over to Aaron and I felt a squeezing sensation in my gut. He was being so polite and courteous and lovely and yet he was just been a judgmental dick. I wanted to take Aaron home really because I was beginning to feel that he was accepting all of the snide comments, like a kicked puppy, because he doesn't want to rock the boat or cause any conflict. But I didn't want a boat that had him in it. I had been wanting to throw his racist, bigoted ass overboard for years.

"Is this just a...a what?" He started, his fork held to his mouth as he vaguely gestured between Aaron and I. My eyes narrow. "A fling? A casual f - "

"Things have changed since your day, Dad." Dad said quickly, meeting my eye. He didn't care that he'd been about to swear in front of the kids, that was something he'd always been clear on. I did mind, however, and the roof of my mouth was beginning to burn from keeping it clamped down so tightly. I wasn't going to fly off the handle. I wasn't going to let him have that kind of power over me.

"I didn't think things had changed that much. You sure he's not old enough to be your father?" He let out a throaty chuckle, throwing the him into the air as though I hadn't repeated Aaron's name more times than I had fingers. "Shouldn't you, you know - " At least he left this part of his speech to the imagination but it didn't take much of mine to think what kind of depraved, seedy thoughts he was no doubt having about me and a man who was apparently old enough to father me. Not that he'd bothered to ask Aaron his age, or his profession, or his favorite sports team - 

"No, I don't know. How about you tell us?" My voice was sharp and brittle, biting at the air. He stared back at me, his pale mouth curling into a thin line. I neatly placed my knife and fork down on my plate. I could feel my blood steaming under my skin. "We're never going to be good enough for you, are we? I could marry a man of your choosing and you'd still find something to pick fault at, probably something to do with me because I'm a woman who's a doctor who earns more than her boyfriend and has two kids with a man who's a criminal. You've spent your entire life having people blindly accept the crap that you says and we're not prepared to do that."

I gulped down my orange juice for something to do and to avoid the stares Mom, Dad, Aimee, Joe and Aaron were firing at me. Mom's mouth was hanging partly open, her knife and fork held so tightly in her fists that her knuckles were turning white. I straightened up in my chair, determined not to falter under their gaze. I wasn't ashamed about calling him out. I didn't care about hurting his feelings or his money or -

Was Aaron faintly smiling? I was sure that beneath the grim, stony-faced expression I could see something of a smirk.

"The FBI recruiting must have gone downhill if you can't even control your own girlfriend." I wanted to leap across the table and hit him. I could feel my anger fizzing in my bones. How dare he say that I had to be controlled and that it was a man's job to do that?

"With all due respect, sir." Aaron's firm yet waveringly polite cut through me. He was playing the diplomat and yet the sir was bordering on impertinence. I liked him all the more for it. "I would never want to control Lizzy because it's her heart and her intelligence that I love about her. And, besides, no human being should be controlled." I watched his face freeze, the corners of his mouth flickering in subtle anger. He probably was used to a man so directly contradicting him.

I wouldn't be surprised if his roots traced back to one of his ancestors owning a slave plantation because, to him, people existed to be controlled and whipped like the animals he reared and crops he grew. But free will was inevitable, even within ourselves. 

Our minds acted in ways we didn't want them to. They acted out, like rebellious teenagers, and we had to let them. We hated them for it. And yet there was nothing we could do about it.


	33. Triginta Duo

After my 'outburst', we quickly left my parents house and I spent the rest of the day and most of the night trying to push him from my mind. Work was always a good way to focus on something else, especially as it was only my second day back and I could see Harrison's voice crooning down my ear whenever I thought too much about the crash. Was Clint alright? I hadn't heard anything about the case from Aaron and I didn't know if I wanted to ask. I knew what had happened the last time I'd allowed the case consume me. I didn't want to go down that route again.

I was currently in the middle of seeing a patient and was waiting outside my office in the foyer, making Kelly check some details on her file as I tried to figure out just what I wanted to do with my patient. She had only been moved onto my list two weeks ago but was almost at full term with her baby so there really was no time to waste. I had already begun to build what I thought was a good, trusting relationship with her and while she and her baby seemed perfectly healthy some of the details that she'd given on her form just didn't add up.

Kelly hadn't been able to find her name, Ailsa Novak, on any previous hospital record which in itself wasn't too unusual because hospitals had technical errors with their computer all the time. She'd said that she'd just moved to the state and didn't have any previous hospital records because she'd been planning on having an entirely independent home birth and assisted by her friends. The fact that she was thirty-two weeks pregnant and hadn't seen any medical professionals was somewhat impressive, alarming and a little suspicious. I hadn't pressed the matter with her, not wanting to ruin the relationship that we were beginning to build but it had been weighing heavily on my mind.

Normally, if someone hasn't been to see doctor it was because their family or close friends were handling their wellbeing. This I would understand but Ailsa didn't have a next of kin or any family at all that Kelly had been able to find. Ailsa was Czech and her English was patchy at best, despite telling me that she'd lived in the US for years now. She had given little detail as to the location of her friends and birthing partners and was also hazy on the details on just how exactly she came to move to the US and what she'd been doing for the last five years.

The only person that I was even sure she had definitely spoken to in the country was a man she'd labelled as her ex-boyfriend, a man that she was worried about and had stressed to me multiple times that she never wanted to see again. I could only presume that he was the father of her baby, not that I'd asked because it was of no real significance to me as long as both Ailsa and her child were healthy.

When I'd asked her about what kind of plan she wanted for the birth, she hadn't had any preference other than that he wasn't there. I was pretty sure that he was another Czech national who had moved over to the country with her, judging from his name of Domek Svoboda, but I hadn't been able to find any existing records for him either.

I had been severely debating as to whether I should ask Aaron if Domek had a criminal background because Ailsa seemed terrified when she was telling me about him. She'd briefly described him to me, after much encouraging from me, and he's definitely seemed like a man you'd want to avoid on a dark night. From her fractured description, the picture I had created in my head was that he looked exactly like a stereotypical gang member from NCIS. Except, this time he was real and he was her ex-boyfriend. That was, if her words were the truth. It wouldn't be the first time someone had lied about someone's identity in my office, whether to protect them or because they were scared of them. 

I was only human and it was hard to not imagine just why she would be so terrified of him. Had he abused her? Were they involved in something criminal? Or was there something else going on? Technically, I wasn't even supposed to care about him because my duty of care was to Ailsa and yet there was no way I was going to be able to shake her terrified voice from my mind. It was impossible not to think about him.

I'd had a word with Evan about everything and we'd both agreed to keep a close eye on her, and him if he decided to show his face. I was praying that he wouldn't because he didn't sound like the type of person who would take kindly to being removed by a security team.

I suddenly jolted as Kelly banged her hand against the desktop and cleared her throat. I glared at her, but focused my attention back onto her and what I'd asked her to do.

"Nothing." She said flatly. "Again, just like the other two times that I've checked. Ailsa has no other medical records, nor does her ex-boyfriend, or anyone else with their names."

"You sure?" I said involuntarily, refusing to believe that every system was completely blank. "Really?" Kelly raised an eyebrow.

"This is me we're talking about. Of course I'm sure." I sighed, squeezing my eyes closed for a moment before resting my head on the heel of my hand.

"It was worth a try." I said. "She's not answering any of my questions and I don't want to push her because I tell it's hard for her. I just need to try and focus on her, forget about Domek and what he might be doing and - "

"But you're very talented at worrying about multiple things at the same time." Kelly said with a smirk. It wasn't even a lie. Sometimes even I was surprised how many separate things I could worry about at once. "It's your superpower."

"While your superpower is withstanding vast amounts of caffeine and managing to stay alive regardless." I said bluntly, a smirk playing on my lips as I watched her take a long gulp from her coffee cup. "And - "

The words died in my throat as Kelly's computer suddenly started beeping. Kelly's brows furrowed and she frantically started clicking at the keys.

"What's happening?"

"Security alert." Kelly said simply, her fingers jumping across the keys. I felt myself freeze. "The hospital has a list of people who aren't allowed to be here because they're a risk to patients." I nodded. I knew this. I'd recently added Domek to this list after an appointment with Ailsa. If someone on the list was spotted on CCTV, an alarm would immediately be triggered and security would be called.

"Is that what's happened?" Kelly nodded, her eyes narrowing with focus. "Security will be on it. They always are. They're very good." I murmured aloud, leaning slightly over the desk to see just what Kelly was clicking on. She was scanning through the hospital's CCTV footage to locate just who had alerted the alarms. It was the hospital foyer, packed with bustling people, and yet there was one face that I instantly locked onto.

My eyes widened. I knew that face. It so perfectly fit the face that Ailsa had described, the one that sent her into a spinning descent of fear if she so much as talked about him. The one that filled her with so much terror.

It was Domek and he was pulling out a gun.


	34. Triginta Tres

Shit. 

That was the only thing running through my mind. 

Oh, shit.

I was trying to tell Ailsa what was happening as quickly and succinctly as I could but I just felt that my words were spewing from my mouth and making absolutely no sense. Everything else around me seemed to have gone quiet but that was probably just in my head.

I paused for a moment, judging whether the pallor of Ailsa's skin was because she was simply terrified or was going to be sick. If the maniac swinging his gun around in the lobby was her ex-boyfriend then just what exactly was she potentially mixed up in? Was this why she was so scared of him? I was beginning to understand, just a little.

I peered over Ailsa's shoulder before turning around to glance down the corridor. Everyone was standing around in tight clusters, their voices low and panicked, clearly not quite knowing what to do. The hospital had been threatened before and so the majority of my colleagues knew what to expect but, surprisingly enough, the weapon of choice had never with a gun.

My mind was fizzing with ideas and, despite my panic, I knew exactly what Domek wanted. It was the only thing that made sense: he must want Ailsa or her baby, or maybe he didn't care which. I couldn't shake or panic. I needed to keep a steady hand. Ailsa was relying on me. I'd dealt with over-protective and violent partners and ex-partners before. I just had to pretend that Domek was another. He just happened to have a gun.

"Fuck!" I sharply turned to Kelly who bashed at her computer keyboard, pushing away from her desk and getting to her feet. Her expression was frenzied, her eyebrows drown tightly across her face. "He's just got in the elevator."

"What?" I stormed towards her, lightly gripping onto Ailsa's shoulder. I was trying to remain calm but my heartbeat was growing erratic. Why hadn't anyone stopped him?

"No one wants to touch him when he's got a gun!" Kelly shouted, her voice frantic. "It's busy in the lobby, it's the children's clinic this morning and - "

Ailsa was pulling away from me, a hand gently resting on her stomach and her eyes pulled wide. She looked more terrified than anyone I had ever seen, even more than my own expression when I'd been staring through the glass and looking at Lexi, a tiny, almost translucent lump, lying in the incubator.

Domek wanted Ailsa. And he had a gun. And he was in the elevator.

Fuck.

At some point, Evan had started yelling but perhaps I'd just learned to tune out his voice. His hair was ruffled, more so than usual, and his glasses were almost sliding off his nose.

"I've already started evacuating people down the fire escape." He said quickly, as the people lining the corridor slowly began to disappear through a back door that would lead them to the car park. "But we need to get Ailsa somewhere." I nodded, watching Kelly pick up the phone an furiously start dialing numbers.

"Who're you calling?"

"The cops, the FBI, anyone."

We needed to get Ailsa out of here now and every second that we spent in the corridor, Domek was one step closer to getting to her. I knew we couldn't take the stairs - it would take too long seeing as she couldn't move very quickly and would have to stop to rest - but I knew we couldn't remain here. I didn't want to start to wonder what Domek would do if he found her. He was going to all this effort and he had a gun; the prospect didn't seem too positive.

"Come on." I said, as reassuringly and confidently as I could, looping my arm around her shoulders and slowly moving down the corridor. Evan worryingly glanced at me but soon became distracted by the streams of people who were trying to force themselves through the double doors, their panic building. I could feel it in the air like sweat; it was something palpable and agitated.

I was walking as fast as Ailsa could hobble, turning the corner and opening a door that lead into fa now deserted corridor.

"Come on." I repeated, my hands growing clammy against her shoulders. "A little faster." Ailsa's eyes were filled with tears and I knew that nothing I could say would calm her. I was dying for answers as to just exactly what had happened between her and Domek because this had just got serious. It was no longer just to do with her; other people were under threat now and I didn't want anyone else to get hurt in the process.

Ailsa didn't speak as we moved, her eyes flickering around the corridor. 

"Ailsa, what did he do?" I hated myself for even speaking the words, for forcing her when she was in so much clear discomfort, but I didn't know how else to help the situation. We needed to have some kind of idea as to what Domek was capable of and the limits he would go to.

Ailsa sharply shook her head.

"Please." I begged. "No one else has to know, I promise. I'm just trying to help. You won't be in trouble. I just need to make sure that he won't hurt you - "

"He's already hurt me." She said in a choked voice, her accent growing thicker with emotion. I frowned slightly, her words jarring. Ailsa paused for a moment, her eyes boring into mine.

"I didn't come here by choice." Her words were slow, painful, and I was holding onto her every wore.

"Here? To the US?" She nodded and I felt my blood run cold.

"He promised that I would be able to find work. He promised that to the other girls too - "

"Other girls?" I felt as though my brain was divided into two halves: I was worrying about just where I could hide Ailsa and whether Domek would think to check a supply closet and the other part of my brain was trying to digest what Ailsa was saying. There were other girls that Domek was involved with? 

He had forced her here and promised her work. He was not her ex-boyfriend, nor had he ever really been.

I could hear voices echoing through the walls, voices that I couldn't identify. We didn't have enough time to get anywhere much further. I was going to have to make a decision right now.

I had to keep my head, no matter the horrible sinking feeling in my stomach that Domek wasn't her ex-boyfriend but her trafficker.

I was now in the middle of a human trafficking ring. Ailsa must have been coming to the hospital without his knowledge because she'd wanted medical care for her child. She had put her neck on the line for the sake of her baby and had found something within herself to ignore the fear of Domek's wrath. I was going to have to do the same.

"Come on." I said firmly, a warm smile on my face. "I know where we can go."

*** 

Every ounce of me was praying that Domek wouldn't hide her in the supply closet. I'd hidden her behind three clustered shelving units with a large bottle of water, a hypodermic needle and a hammer that had, for some reason, been on the shelves. She'd be safe there, until I could come back and get her.

I hoped she would be. I didn't know what I'd do with myself if she wasn't.

Domek must have got her pregnant, either before or after bringing her over to Virginia. He'd found out that she'd been sneaking off to the hospital and, judging by the gun, he wasn't happy about it. He was probably worried that she'd give the game away on his operation when in fact all she wanted was medical attention for her baby.

Now that I didn't have Ailsa by my side judging my expression I was allowing myself to panic. The FBI had taken my gun away as evidence from the crash and I'd yet to have it returned. I had no weapon. It looked like it was time to use my shoe as a weapon again and stick the heel into someone's head if the situation called for it.

I was creeping as silently as I could through the corridor, the still silence sinking into my pores. At least I could rest easy in the fact that Evan was getting people out and I need to worry about them getting caught in the crossfire. I hoped that he had managed to clear the whole floor - or even the whole hospital - but I knew that that wouldn't be the case.

I halted at the end of the corridor, folding my arms and peering around the corner at the next corridor. My skin was clammy, the bare skin of my shoulders flushing hot. What would Domek do when they couldn't find Ailsa? Would he leave?

I doubted it. He'd brought a gun. He looked pretty determined in his mission.

Kelly had called the cops. It would be fine. I just had to keep her hidden until then.

But where was Domek now? He had to be out of the elevator. Was he prowling the corridors? Or was he lying in wait, biding his time and - 

Hearing the heavy thud of footsteps at the opposite end of the corridor, I whipped around and felt my heart fall out of my open mouth.

It was Domek, his face folded into a scowl, and another man at his side who looked a similar height and intimidating build. They both had sleek black guns clutched in their hands.

Fuck.

Fuck.

"Where's Ailsa?" Domek's accent was strong, but not identical to Ailsa's. Where was he from? Not the Czech Republic, that was for sure.

"I don't know." He couldn't know that I knew Ailsa, could he? I straightened my spine and lifted my chin, swallowing thickly.

"You're lying."

"I don't know." I repeated, more confidently this time. Domek surveyed me for a second before tilting his head to the side.

"You're her doctor." I felt my eyes involuntarily widen as the breath was ripped from my lungs.

They knew. They'd been paying more attention than Ailsa had thought.

Fuck.

I had to protect Ailsa. They'd kill her if they got their hands on her.


	35. Triginta Quattour

I didn't know what to do. My feet were burning to move but I didn't know in which direction. If I turned to run they'd shoot me and then torture me until I gave up Ailsa's location.

They were probably going to shoot me anyway. I needed an idea and some small fragment of a plan. I had nothing, other than I had to keep Ailsa safe and hidden.

Domek and his sidekick were now slowly walking towards me, their measured and calculated pace surely trying to psyche me out. I wasn't going to tell them that a part of it was working.

They wanted something from me, Ailsa's location, and they knew enough about me to know who I was and that I had the answers they were looking for. They needed me. They wouldn't dare kill me because then they'd have nothing.

The hospital seemed far too quiet. Was anyone nearby?

They wouldn't kill me. They needed me too much. But was I really going to pin my entire life on a flimsy statement?

Domek paused for a moment. He was stood just out of my arm's reach, his cold, green eyes narrowing as I forced myself to keep his gaze. I needed to -

I shot backwards as Domek lunged forwards and made to grab me, ducking under his arms. Could I fight both of them? Was that -  
***  
I felt like I'd been hit by a truck and had a hangover at the same time. I must have hit my head on something; that was the only thing that would explain the splintering pain shooting through my skull. I tried to open my eyes but flinched back against the blinding light in front of me. My arms felt tight and tired as though someone had been yanking on them, like that medieval form of torture of tying you to a bit of wood and letting four horses tear you to pieces.  
What happened? I couldn't remember. Had I yanked my stitches out by accident and had suffered another major head injury? I let my head loll backwards, my neck cracking, and hit something hard and metal. 

"Fuck." I groaned, the cool surface chilling my spine. I lifted my head up and forced my eyes open, blinking back against the blurry spotlights over head. I tried to push myself to my feet but my back and arms screamed in protest. Fuck.

My vision began to clear and I realised I was sat on the floor. My arms were held over my head and, looking up, I saw that my wrists were tied together with thick rope and fastened onto the metal shelving unit behind me. 

Suddenly, my mind re-focused. That was why my arms were aching, they were tied above my head. I had been with Ailsa, taking her away from Domek. I'd come face to face with him, he'd hit me over the head with something - 

I might have been right about Domek not killing me but I hadn't thought he would stow me away somewhere.

I was still in the hospital; at least I knew that much. My jail cell was a particularly messy storage cupboard littered with the usual hospital supplies. I didn't know which supply cupboard. The vast majority were identical.

I shifted in my heap on the floor, trying to regain the circulation in my legs. The air was completely still. I couldn't hear a single noise; there were no cars or quiet murmurs of whir of equipment. Nothing.

Silence.

I tugged at the rope securing my hands but it remained tight. Did people even know I was missing? How was Ailsa? Where was Domek and his sidekick? How long had it been?

I tried to run my tongue over my dried, chapped lips but I was met with something papery and metallic.

Great. If I had to guess, I would say that I had duct tape over my mouth.

Fuck. I couldn't scream for help.

I squeezed my eyes tightly shut before reopening them. This was not the time to panic. I needed to keep my shit together and my mind focused. Of course people knew I was missing. Kelly and Evan and Becky didn't miss a trick. The police were probably here by now searching for me. Domek would be in handcuffs and Ailsa would be fine.

I needed to take things slowly. First things first, could I somehow figure out where I was?

It was a storage cupboard. I could see that much but figuring out which specific storage cupboard would be the true challenge. I had never paid excruciating detail to the layout of each of them before, even if I now wished that I had, and there was no floor specific or discipline specific equipment that I could see, ruling out a number of floors. Or it could simply be that I couldn't see the speculums or tiny flashlights used for eye surgery. I could, theoretically, be anywhere in the entire hospital. I could be - 

Fuck. If they had put me in the basement then there was absolutely no way someone was going to aimlessly come across me screaming while tied to a shelving unit. The basement would make the most sense if someone wanted to hide her, though. It was away from the CCTV cameras and security personnel of the main hospital floors, it was dark and secluded, it was - 

The lock on the door suddenly clicked. I felt my whole body tense as the door slowly slid open. It wasn't Domek stood in the doorway but the man who had been with him. I watched him close the door shut, silently, with a purposeful hand. Was he someone else from the trafficking ring? Probably.

He looked just as terrifying as Domek did, maybe even more so because I had never heard him speak. He had the same tall, stocky frame and sharp eyes. To him, I was probably nothing more than a grape to squish beneath his shoe. And I wasn't even that small.

He locked the door with a twist, turning towards me and walking slowly like a panther stalking his prey. I was the prey. I was the gazelle about to be eaten.

I sat up as tall as I could given the ropes binding me in place and forced myself to maintain eye contact with him. I might be feeling clammy all over and semi-nauseous but I wasn't going to show that I was scared.

I could hear my shaky breath in the silence of the room as he kneeled down in front of me. His breath was warm against my face, as though he was dragging a finger over my cheek, and I wanted to jerk backwards but there was nowhere for me to go. I held my breath as he reached forwards and slowly peeled the tape from her lips. I didn't want to move. The action felt far too intimate and dominating for her liking, with his movements able to control my speech, my breathing, my whole being. I ran my tongue over my dry lips, swallowing the metallic taste. He was watching me like a hawk.

I couldn't give him control over me.

"Where is Ailsa?" I kept my expression neutral but my mind was whirring. His accent certainly wasn't Czech, or even Eastern European. It was obviously American and I'd hazard a guess at Maryland. How had he come to be mixed up in a trafficking ring?

His accent was an interesting point but it didn't help me right now.

"I don't know." I said steadily. This was the only answer I would give him. I wasn't going to give him anything on Ailsa. He could kill me first.

I held his gaze, watching the man let out a deep, sarcastic breath. I edged my feet closer towards my body, in an attempt to protect myself.

I was in trouble now.

I bit my lip to stop myself from whimpering as the man slapped me three times across the face. I could feel a warm trickle of blood around my nose as he pulled backwards, his lips curling into something of a snarl. My brain felt like it was rattling around my empty skull and I squeezed my eyes shut for the briefest of moments. I'd been hit before. It wasn't anything I couldn't handle.

"Where is Ailsa?"

So Domek and his sidekick weren't playing around. I had known that. But I wasn't telling this guy anything and that just meant I needed to buckle in for the ride. It might be a long one.

Someone would find me. Soon. 

I didn't know how much of me would be left when they did but I would be able to rest assured that Ailsa was safe. That was all that mattered.


	36. Triginta Quinque

The door slammed shut, the noise jolting through my body in anticipation of the reaction that would come with the action. But there was none. He was gone.

For now, at least.

I was pretty sure that the stitches on her forehead must have torn open, judging from the warmth I could feel pooling in my hairline. It was probably from when he had slammed my head back against the shelves. At least there would be proof of my existence in the room, in the form of my blood, if anything else happened.

He'd split my lip with the force of his first and, considering the way my chest ached every time I breathed, broke at least one rib. I felt like I had been subconsciously holding my breath the entire time he had been standing in front of me and, now that he was gone, my lungs were burning with relief and anxiety.

I curled my legs up towards my chest, forcing my muscles to work, from where he had kicked them apart to kneel between them. His breath had stank of fish and I'd wanted to tell him but doubted he would appreciate my observation.

I wanted to curl my arms over my chest to try and conserve what little warmth I could but my arms were still tied above my head. My sleeveless shirt was now hanging open, the sheer act of unbuttoning my clothing nothing but a power move on his part, and the chill of the room was eating away at my skin. The hairs on my arms were standing on end, both due to the icy temperature and the endorphins that were still flooding through my system.

He was gone. I was fine. I could still breathe and I hadn't been smashed into a pulp. That was a win.

I needed to find something that could help get me out of here. Anything. I just needed a scrap of something...

The fact that it was so cold and I couldn't hear any of the music that was fed into the waiting rooms meant that I was a fair distance away from the main wings of the hospital.

I was probably in the basement. I'd been unable to shake the idea from my head since I'd first thought of it and was now practically looking for clues to confirm my theory. I couldn't do anything from the basement; no one would hear any sounds I could make unless they were stood outside the door and now, with the duct tape stuck back over my mouths, any noise I did make would be minimal.

He might not want to kill me but that didn't mean he couldn't hurt me. I had thought that he was going to force me to kiss him, when his face had been hovering an inch away from my own, but he had just wanted to hold my jaw in his hand so I couldn't pull away when he hit me.

If he had forced me to kiss him, that would have revealed a whole other level of his intentions and kissing wouldn't be the only thing he would force me to do to make me tell him where Ailsa was. But I didn't need him to make such an obvious mood; I had practically been able to smell his intent when he was unbuttoning my shirt and squeezing my skin in his paws.

I had wanted to spit in his face so damn badly but my lip had already bloody and swollen and I didn't think I could face another hit.

I was stalling for time every time I rebutted his question or glared at his touch and we both knew it. I was almost hoping that they would give up with me soon and spend their time looking for Ailsa without my help, because the FBI and the cops must be around by now. I felt like I'd been trapped in the room for hours.

But whether 'without my help' meant killing me or just leaving me tied up I didn't know. I would have to wait until the man returned with his bloody eyes and his eager hands.

The lights seemed to be getting more blurry every time I blinked. I supposed that I had lost quite a bit of blood in the last week and that wouldn't make me my highest functioning of human. At the moment, I was lost, defenseless, pathetic. There was no change there then...

My eyes shot open as something in the room began to buzz. I caught a flash of light on the floor from an object semi-hidden under the shelving unit on the other side of the room. I felt my stomach drop as I realised what the object was.

It was my cell. It must have dropped from my pocket when Domek and his sidekick had brought me in here. I was too far away to read the name that was flashing across the screen - was it Kelly? Evan? Aaron? Or my parents? Were they involved now? 

The FBI had to be here. Evan was a clever man and surely he, after seeing Domek on the security footage, would realise that this was no normal case. They would realise that I was missing; Aaron would have realised that I was missing and now that I hadn't answered my cell, he would know that something serious was going on. If he hadn't known that already.

God, I missed him. I wanted out of this room and be able to see him again and Kelly and the kids...

I gently leaned backwards, resting my head on top of one in the shelves in the hope that it would stop my nose from bleeding because I didn't want to think about how much blood I had on my face. 

I could still feel the man's rancid breath and hands roaming over my skin. I wanted to claw at my neck and my arms where he had touched me, to maim at my own flesh, but I was tethered like an animal. 

What did it say about me, that I always seemed to be the one being dragged kicking and screaming into the painful reality? What did it say that no matter how hard I tried to be the best person I possibly could, people still ended up her hating me the most. That was how all of my relationships tended to go, especially with men. I might as well cut Aaron off now - it would save him the effort - and then he could go back to his newly repaired apartment with Jack before he inevitably ended up hating me too. I wouldn't be any good for him. I'd just make things messier, like I always did.

I swallowed the lump that was lodged in my throat as my cell stopped buzzing and the screen faded to black. I wasn't going to cry, no matter how cold and lonely I felt and how heavily my bones were aching in pain. I couldn't let myself get complacent and switch off; that was the way I would never wake up.

I needed to focus on something, something deep that I could allow myself to get lost in.

Aaron. I shifted my weight slightly, the ropes digging painfully into the sensitive skin of my wrists. We had been together for almost eight months and yet how much was there that I didn't know about him? There had to be. There were things that I hadn't told him about me. I could only assume it went both ways.

What had his childhood been like? That was something we hadn't really talked about, because every time I tried to bring it up he would inevitably change the subject. What did that mean?

I knew that he'd gone to boarding school as a young teenager and had had a turbulent relationship with his dad but that was it. The rest was left up to my imagination. Just how turbulent had their relationship been? Had anything else happened between them? What had they argued about? Had his father ever -

I felt a droplet of blood slide on my eyelid. I closed my eyes, the dull ache in my skull having worked its way down to the base of my neck. I could feel my mind sliding away from its usual confines and slipping down a path that I didn't allow it to go down in everyday life. I needed to drag myself out; I couldn't think about those times, the dark times, or I really would close my eyes and want to go to sleep. I had to think about the happy times with Kelly, Penelope, my family, the kids, Aaron. 

But it was the darkest moments that always won, wasn't it?


	37. Triginta Sex

I could feel my vision steadily getting blurrier with every breath I took. Time had lost all meaning to me now and I was measuring it in the number of breaths I took. I kept losing count, my mind tripping up on the numbers after too long. I could hear a clock faintly ticking on the wall behind me but that didn't help. I'd lost counts of the ticks a long time ago. Or, at least, it felt a long time ago.

My wrists were painfully raw, the sensitive skin chafing every time I tried to maneuver myself into a more comfortable position or tried to stand. I'd already tried, in a moment of desperation, to reach my cell with my foot and drag it towards me and I felt as though I'd broke another rib in the process. I probably had. The tears that had leaked from my eyes hadn't been imagined, at least I didn't think they had. I'd tried shouting as loudly as I could, regardless of how pointless it was from behind the tape. I was only wasting my energy and a small section of my mind knew this. I ought to be conserving my energy and concentrating on keeping my breathing steady.

The rest of my mind was screaming at me to fight and kick and scream until my throat grew hoarse and I lost all feeling in my body. Because that was what would eventually be my downfall - the cold and the blood loss. I already felt woozy and as though my entire body was made of lead and I was attempting to swim. Even breathing was becoming an effort with the movement of dragging a breath in through my lungs and out through my mouth burning through my chest.

It seemed like hours since the man had come to see me. Maybe it had been. Maybe they'd given up on me and were looking for Ailsa without my input. Maybe they'd been captured.

Was anyone looking for me?

I tried to sit up straight, telling myself that I couldn't be so ridiculous, but winced at the pain spreading through my ribs. I was being ridiculous; people had managed to survive for days, even weeks, lost at sea or in the desert and I couldn't even handle a couple of hours inside a storage cupboard.

I needed to get a grip. I was being pathetic. I was barely even bleeding and I was ready to burst into choked tears.

I had hoped, in a brief moment of optimism, that the blood coming from the cut on my head would clot automatically but, as I felt another drop slowly roll down my temple, it was clear that it hadn't. I'd been pressing my head as firmly as I could against the shelf to try and staunch the bleeding but the surface was hard and cold and made my head hurt even more so had to take a break when it became unbearable.

It was the silence that was stabbing me the most - the cold, empty, silence that only I existed in. I was alone on the earth with my slowly bleeding head and eyes clouded with tears. I was - 

The door clicked open. My throat dried up, all hope that Domek had abandoned his preoccupation with me dying, as his sidekick firmly closed the door behind him.

Fuck.

I'd had long enough to wonder whether he was going to kill me. I didn't want to find out. I just wanted to see my kids.

I had to get a grip. I wasn't going to let him see me cry.

I wished that he looked smug and was mocking my appearance because at least then I would be able to hide my fear behind a sarcastic quip. Instead, I was met with nothing but a savage glare and his roaming hands and the same words that he repeated over and over again.

I wasn't going to tell him where Ailsa was. She deserved to have a life that wasn't controlled by someone else and access healthcare for herself and her baby without any consequences. 

I shuffled backwards slightly as he stalked towards me, his eyes flickering between my shirt that hung open and the blood steadily dripping down my face. Was he proud of his work? Or was he wholly indifferent and saw me as merely an obstacle to get through to achieve a goal?

I inhaled a sharp breath as he kicked my legs open and knelt between them, his eyes running over my torso. I forced myself to keep my gaze firm when all I wanted to do was squirm away from him and his wandering eyes that focused solely on my nipples through my bra. The temperature was brutally cold and every inch of my body could feel it. I wanted to hit him, tear his gaze away from me, but I didn't dare. I didn't think my arms had the energy, either.

His hand was wrapped around my throat before I could react, the fingers digging into my skin and slowly squeezing. Tears sprung to my eyes as I feebly tried to move away from him, my lungs burning as they gasped for air. My vision grew even blurrier, dark spots dancing in the corners of my eyes and -

I spluttered, sucking in gulps of air as he pulled away and ripped the tape from my mouth in one swift movement. His hand cupped my chin, his fingers spread to dig painfully into the skin of my cheek and one reached up to run over my chapped lips. I wanted to recoil, spit at him, bite his finger clean off rather than accept it as he jammed two fingers into my mouth and down my throat.

"Where is Ailsa, you fucking worthless bitch..." I gagged on his fingers, struggling to think clearly and only one thought flashing through my mind. They still hadn't found her. That brought me comfort; that after all of this, I was the one still winning. No matter how many times he pushed his fingers into my mouth or sought to control my body, he wasn't going to be able to take that away from me.

I raised an eyebrow as he pulled his hand away and forced myself to smirk. "Do you really think that I'm going to tell you?" I held his gaze, the panic fizzing in my stomach and I forced myself to push it down. There was nothing to fear except fear itself. I had to hold my nerve.

I could see the anger and frustration boiling on his face as he slowly replaced the tape across my lips. I didn't break his gaze; it was the only ounce of power I had and I wasn't going to misuse it, no matter how scared and tired I was.

Ailsa was safe. That was the only thing that mattered. Ailsa was safe. She was safe, from him and Domek and - 

The man shot forwards, seizing my throat again and spitting into my face. Something different was burning in his eyes, something frantic desperate, and as he reached for his trousers and began unbuckling his belt I felt my mind clear indefinitely. This was his last resort. Wasn't I the lucky one?

No. No. The blood was rushing to my head, my heart pounding so ferociously I felt as though I was being stabbed.

No. Please. No, not again - 

I kicked out as his grip loosened on my neck, his other hand reaching to pull my legs wider. I was shaking my head, kicking out more forcefully as he brushed his hands up my legs and pushed my skirt to my thighs. The cold stung against my skin as I wrenched on the rope binding my hands, ignoring the pain that shot through my wrists and the dribble of blood that rolled down my arm. I wanted to scream through the tape that silenced me but every breath and kick was using more energy than I had left.

He settled more firmly between my legs, his torso brushing against mine and pinning me to the shelves. I continued writhing in his grip, the tears rolling down my cheeks and his eyes burned into mine.

Fuck. No. No. I wasn't going to beg or plead with him. I couldn't let him take everything from me. I wouldn't give him that satisfaction, no matter if that was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to beg that not again as he pulled the lower-half of my body towards him, his knuckles dirtied with my blood, and palmed at my breasts. I wanted to beg for another moment, in that I might fall asleep and not have to experience the pain. Every inch of my body was held tight like a coiled spring but I needed it to relax if I didn't want to be covered in more of my own blood.

I had had enough of men taking what they wanted from me. My struggles were doing nothing; my muscles were too weak to hurt him, my mind too dazed and cloudy to think of anything worth saying. 

Here we go again. I was going to die this time. I already felt like I was half dead, floating above earth and barely hanging on. This would sever it, reaffirm the words that had been forced into me last time and choke the remaining breath that was sitting in my lungs. 

I wanted. I just wanted it not to happen. I wanted to sleep. I wanted - 

A loud noise was echoing from somewhere, voices filling the air around me. Figures were moving around the room but were obstructed by my hazy vision. I couldn't see their faces, only their vague features of height and dark hair. The man, his hand squeezing tighter around my throat, was shouting back at them, his voice reverberating around my skull and jarring the dull pain shooting through the back of my head.

Could they all just stop talking? Could they just...just...


	38. Triginta Septem

A gentle yet firm hand was poking at my head, a warm cloth in their hand, and I was trying hard not to jolt backwards and bat them away. My ribs were burning from the uncomfortable position that I was curled in; I had no recollection of how I'd come to be slumped on the chair and my memory, and my vision, was still hazy. One moment the man had been looming over me, his hands clawing at my thighs, and the next someone was pulling the tape from lips and Spencer was rambling on about blunt force trauma.

I blinked several times, my eyes flickering under the harsh lights. I'd somehow gotten out of the cupboard and, as my eyes locked onto one of the posters hung on the opposite wall, been brought back up to the gynecology floor. Had someone carried me? My legs, limply wrapped around the legs of the chair, didn't feel capable of supporting any weight.

I could still feel his hands on me. His breath. His wandering, cruel eyes.

I wanted a shower. It was going to take more than one shower to scrape the feeling of him from my skin. That was if I could bare to stand up for so long without needing to sit down again.

I'd broken a rib, at least two. I could clearly feel the pain in my torso now that I was no longer panicking about being raped or murdered.

Someone was repeating my name. The light pressure on my head stopped. I raised my eyes, blinking back against the light. Evan was watching me with a careful gaze; it was Evan dabbing at my head with a wet cloth stained red. His mouth was stretched to a thin line.

"Sorry..." I murmured, his words lost to me. He probably didn't expect an answer. "What were you saying?"

"I think you've got concussion." He repeated slowly, brows furrowing in concern. "Or the blood loss is worse than I thought. Your lack of concentration isn't normal, you don't seem able to focus..."

Normally, I would have rejected his idea before he could open his mouth but I could feel the cogs grinding up against each other inside of me. Something wasn't right but that was obvious. I felt like my mind had been dulled by anesthetic and I was helplessly trying to break through the fog.

"Probably a little concussion." I admitted quietly and Evan smiled slightly. I hoped he wouldn't hold this over me, the fact that I had agreed with him for once.

"You're going to need more stitches" He said. And try to not bang them against a shelf this time." I didn't need to tell him that I didn't exactly do it on purpose. My throat was painfully dry, rubbed raw from screaming behind the tape.

"Where's Ailsa?" No one had told me. They would have told me if she was injured, wouldn't they? Had Domek got to her?

"She's with the FBI. And, she's fine if a little shaken up." The FBI. Was Aaron here? Had he ever dealt with a human trafficking case before? "She'll be okay, though. Last thing I heard, they were sorting out where she's going to stay and what their next moves are going to be.

"Not a lot." I said firmly, the force of my voice hurting my head. Evan raised an eyebrow. "She's thirty-two weeks pregnant."

"They know that. They're looking after her, I promise." Evan wouldn't lie to me, not when I felt so weak I wanted to collapse onto the floor. "She was asking about you, you know. I told her you were okay now. I think she feels guilty about not telling you sooner."

I didn't care about the injuries I had sustained; if she had told me about Domek sooner, she might not have had to live in so much fear as she had.

"Was anyone hurt?"

"A couple of people have minor injuries." Evan said, slowly continuing to wipe the blood from the side of my face. "But you got the worst of it. They didn't actually use their guns, thankfully."

"He was American, the other man." I said, not knowing why exactly I was telling Evan because he wasn't going to care. "He's not who you'd expect to be involved in something like this."

"People never are." I was trying to focus on Evan's words and the slow, steady nature of his breathing but I couldn't. I could feel my entire body shaking uncontrollably and I was powerless to stop it even if the methods I had repeated over and over again to my patients, that I knew like the back of my hand, were hanging at the forefront of my mind.

My head felt like it was on the verge of exploding, too many thoughts and sensations flooding through and wrapping around my senses. My skin was crawling, as though a cold hand was running across it, and I could still feel his thick breath and those clawing hands - 

"Lizzy? You alright? It's okay, you're okay - " I could feel the tears welling in my eyes as Evan stopped dabbing at my head. His hand lightly rested on my shoulder and I forced myself not to flinch away from him. I felt like I was drowning, suffocating under my own breath as voices swirled around me.

A flash of neon grew closer to me. I looked up at the voice, blinking away the tears despite the few that had already slipped from my eyes. It was Kelly, her eyes rimmed with red and smudges of mascara dotted around her face. She swallowed as I met her gaze, her eyes running over the wound on my head and Evan's grip on my shoulder.

"You okay? Is there anything I can do?" There was another flood of voices coming from down the corridor, familiar voices that I knew belonged to the BAU team. I kept my eyes low. I couldn't bare to look at Aaron.

The knowledge that he was there, that Kelly was sat on a chair across from me with her brows furrowed in an anxious line across her face, made the tears fall faster down my cheeks. They wanted me to be okay and I nodded, forcing a smile and meeting Kelly's eyes. 

I didn't feel okay. I felt sick and caged like an animal. I felt weak, stupid and pathetic. I didn't want to look at Aaron, or any of the team, because they would be able to see through me like a piece of glass. 

They would be able to see me for the worthless, shameful human that I really was.

"Why don’t we go somewhere more private?" Evan was murmuring into my ear, his hand slowly rubbing over my back the standard gesture used to calm someone. He was telling me that I was okay and that I was safe.

I didn't feel safe. Not with Kelly's eyes fixed on me and Aaron's looming presence in the background of my vision, torn between sitting by my side and giving me some space.

I wanted to crawl into bed and pull the duvet up over my head. I wanted everyone to focus on someone else, not the rope burns around my wrists or the unhealthy pallor of my skin. I wanted to become invisible.

I hated being able to look around the room with the knowledge that everyone knew what had happened. Everyone knew what the man had tried to do, the wound I had sustained on my head and the damage at my wrists and the bruises clawed into my thighs. 

They all probably knew his name. I didn't even have that much. He would be the man of my dreams, my nightmares, the man from my childhood who I would never be able to erase...

I suddenly sprung to my feet, even though my legs wobbled beneath me, and stormed for the bathroom, pushing the door open and collapsing to the floor as I dry heaved into the toilet. I could hear Evan and Aaron's frantic voices from outside as I gasped for breath, my face wet with tears and sweat. What were they saying? Commenting about how much of a wreck I was? 

The door slowly opened and I didn't have to turn to now that it was Evan dropping to his knees next to me. I wanted to make a comment about his presence in the female toilet but I didn't have the energy. 

"So you're clearly not okay." Evan said slowly, "no matter how easily you can lie to Kelly." His words felt like glass sticking into my skin. His words hurt, but they also weren't untrue. 

I wasn't okay. I felt like every fragment of my body, including my brain, was shaking. 

"I think you should have a full-body scan, so we can rule out any brain damage. You're showing some of the symptoms." He was using his doctor voice, a kind yet firm tone that I'd rarely heard as I pushed myself more comfortably onto my knees to look over at him. "You're off balance, vomiting, have blurred vision."

I wanted to tune out all of Evan's words but, in the silence of the bathroom, I couldn't. His words were true and I found myself nodding. A scan might be able to stop the shock that had seized every one of my cells and refused to let go. 

Evan's frown seemed to deepen. Perhaps that was how he knew something really was going on inside my head; I never so easily agreed with him.


	39. Triginta Octo

Someone draped a sage green blanket around my shoulders at some point but I didn't know who. I hadn't been paying attention. There was a plastic cup filled with orange juice on the table. I was back in the gynecology waiting room, feeling as though someone had just probed inside my head. I'd had the scan and everything looked normal. There were no visible major injuries and the sickness and dizziness were apparently just further evidence of the fact that I had a minor concussion.

It didn't feel minor but they hadn't told me anything that I hadn't been able to guess by myself. It was always reassuring, though, that something hadn't been implanted into my brain in those minutes that I'd been unconscious. And it had been minutes because from the moment Domek had stepped inside the hospital to now had been less than four hours in total.

My tormentor's visits had been every fourty-five minutes or so and yet they'd seemed to stretch out for years. That was just another fact to the argument of how weak I was.

The waiting room was deserted, or at least silent, and I figured everyone had made a pointed decision to give me some time alone. I was glad of that because it gave me a split-second of a chance to try and digest everything. It allowed me a chance to breath and remind myself that I was the one in control of my own body. Not that that fact felt particularly true right now.

I wanted to go home, more than anything. I wanted to go home and sit in the shower for as long as Aaron would let me before he started to worry.

There wasn't anything else for me to do. I'd seen Ailsa for all of two minutes and she was fine. She was being putting in witness protection for the foreseeable future, even after the baby was born, and I knew that she'd have all the support she needed. Someone had managed to find her an apartment and her passport was being sorted right at this moment. And - 

I suddenly lurched forwards, eyeing the bucket that had been strategically placed by my feet. The nausea had been brewing steadily in my stomach ever since I'd spotted Domek on the CCTV cameras and had yet to dissipate. This made it difficult to recognise what was actual sickness and what was the dread and shame boiling in my intestines. 

Looking up at the shuffle of footsteps against the floor, I watched the BAU team settle into the plastic seats opposite. That was, the BAU team aside from Aaron. Someone had already told me that he was being patched up because he got into a scuffle with Domek when they were taking him to one of the police cars. I could understand, to some degree; I'd want to punch someone if they hurt him too. 

I was glad that he wasn't sat in front of me, staring up at my face with neutral eyes that couldn't help but be tinged with pity. I didn't want pity. I'd had enough of it. 

"How're you feeling?" Dave piped up first, having pulled the short straw to start a conversation with me. I tried to sit up straighter, ignoring the burn in my ribs, and nudged the bucket with my foot. As if I needed any more reminding that it was better.

"Much better." That was somewhat true. It wasn't a lie.

"I'm glad to hear it." He had to say that, even if he meant it. But I wasn't stupid. I could see all their eyes trying not to flicker down to my hands and the rough, chafed skin that encircled my wrists.

This was the part where I had to say what happened, even though they all already knew. They didn't even need to ask me; they could check the CCTV whenever they wanted. It might be encrypted but it would take Penelope all of one second to crack it open. I was practically transparent. That's why I felt so sick to meet their gazes.

"So we've got Domek’s associate on trafficking, kidnap, battery, assault - " Derek said slowly and I found myself nodding. They'd been able to glean all of that from my injuries. Evan might have patched me up so I was no longer leaking blood over the floor but that didn't mean I looked well. "And we were wondering if there was anything else we could charge him for. It could help get him locked away for longer - " I gulped, staring into his dark eyes that made me want to run. I wanted to change the subject. I didn't want this about me. I didn't even want to look at them, knowing that they had walked into that room and seen the man bearing over me and my eyes wild.

"Do you know who the father of Ailsa’s child is?" My voice was croaky but I tried to sound confident. Of course, everyone had made the same assumption about it being Domek and it was highly unlikely Ailsa would tell but it was worth a try. Then they'd be able to get him on real rape too. 

"Rape among trafficking victims is high." Emily said and I nodded. I knew that too. 

And now the ball was in my court again and I really did feel like I was going to be sick. I was going to have to ask it. I couldn't not. There was no way in hell I could ask Aaron, even if he was the most knowledgeable one to give me an answer considering his legal background. But I couldn't because then I really would break down in front of him.

"Will I have to speak in court?" I sounded like an anxious child and I hated myself for it. Dave smiled slightly, an expression that I presumed was supposed to be reassuring to me.

"Not if there’s sufficient evidence to convict him. But it might help." Of course it would help. Whether I would be able to do it and keep my head was something different entirely.

Even with the blanket around my shoulders, every inch of my body felt like it was made of ice. It was two tiny words. That was all I had to say. I'd hate myself it I didn't, more than I already hated myself.

"I guess being an asshole isn't technically illegal." I joked, forcing myself to smile as I ran a hand through my bedraggled hair. Dave smiled, weakly. "But. Attempted rape - "

I focused onto the pad of paper in Spencer's hands that he was furiously scribbling my words down onto, just so I didn't need to meet their eyes. I had said it. Why did I feel so ashamed? I had spent the last ten years of my professional life that it was important to talk about sexual violence and I couldn't even do it myself.

"Lizzy?" I jolted at the mention of my name, jumping up to Aaron lingering in the corridor.

Oh God.

The feelings were so overwhelming that I just felt numb.

"Hey." My words were so quiet that I couldn't be sure he'd even heard me. He looked the same to how he had this morning, aside from the bandages around his knuckles, his lack of suit jacket and the hollow look on his face.

Oh God.

I wanted to jump into his arms and hold him so tightly that I almost broke his bones. I also wanted to sit in a deserted room and stare at the wall and cry for three hours. We'd had barely a handful of moments alone together since the whole thing had ended and, even then, all I'd been able to manage was holding his band while he gently kissed the marks around my wrists. He had been so tender and gentle it had made me want to cry more. But he'd seen that I hadn't wanted to be touched in any great way. I loved him all the more for that.

I didn't ask just what exactly the BAU were doing here because I could put the pieces together. It wasn't too outlandish to think the BAU had been called in when it had been confirmed as human trafficking but the Behavioral Analysis Unit didn't seem to fit that bill. Perhaps they had insisted when they'd heard it was St. Addisons. Maybe Aaron had.  
There was another ping of the elevator and Evan and Becky slowly stepped into the waiting room. I wasn't exactly excited to see them; the last time I had, Becky had been holding my hair back while I threw up and Evan had later patched me up. I felt that I needed to buy them so flowers or something as a way of apologising.

"Everything okay?" Aaron asked the question and I wasn't sure I could string together coherent sentences yet. Evan's face seemed stern but perhaps that was only because half an hour ago they hadn't know whether I'd had a brain injury or not.

"We've just had a call from your daughter’s school and they sent you a message." I felt my eyes widen, the motion sending splinters of pain shooting through my brain. Was everything okay? Becky sighed and folded arms.

"Lola fell in the yard and burst her lip." She said slowly.

"For fuck’s sake." The groan left my lips before I could stop them.

"I think we can all agree that Lizzy's feeling slightly better." I wanted to walk over to him and slap Evan but I wasn't sure I'd be able to make the journey.

"I'll have to go and pick her up - " I didn't quite know how I'd do it but I would. 

"You're not going anywhere other than straight home." Aaron said bluntly, his dark eyes firm and I knew there was absolutely no way I was going to get around him. I also knew that, deep down, I should be resting and definitely not operating heavy machinery but that restriction of what I could do only contributed to my feeling of uselessness. "I'll go and get her. I can look after two people then. It's my turn to look after you instead of the other way around."

"We can take you home while Aaron goes for Lola." Derek said, a broad smile on his face. Had he, had they, forgotten the confession that had ripped something from me. It wasn't likely.

I had admitted it. I couldn't take it back. I still felt sick.

"Are you sure?" He nodded, his smile growing. I found it hard to meet his eyes.

"Wait a minute." I forced myself to look at Evan. "You're technically my patient and I haven't discharged you yet."

"Are you being serious?" I wanted to roll my eyes but thought the motion might just knock me out.

"I'm always serious. If anything happens that’s unusual you need to come straight to A&E."

"I know that."

"What are the symptoms?"

"Really?"

"Yes." I recalled every symptom of brain injuries that I could think of and it was only after I had finished my list did I realise that Evan had wanted check whether my memory was as it had been before today.

"You're missing a big one." He said, his mouth curling into a smirk.

"What?"

"If you become irritable - "

"That’s all the time." Becky interrupted with a wide grin.

"Even when I have broken ribs, a black eye and concussion, I can still put my foot down. You'd better not forget it." I'd thought Aaron might at least smirk a little at this but he didn't, even if the rest of the team did. Was his heart still pounding just as erratically as mine?

"You also shouldn’t be left alone for the next forty-eight hours." Evan said, directing this at Aaron who nodded. He was sure to take that duty very seriously, then. "That's just incase something happens. I'm also ordering that you take the rest of the week off work. Maybe even two weeks - "

"Evan, I - "

"That's not a recommendation, that's an order." He said sharply, in the tone that he used on disobedient patients. "If you appear, I'll have you carted off by security."

His words were true and I knew it, no matter how much I wanted to reject them. No matter how sick and twisted my insides still felt. Everyone was stood in this space, a space I had once considered to be bright and airy that was now closing in on me, because of me. Because I had got myself into a situation and not been able to get myself out of it.

Because I had failed.

I hadn't cried since I'd left the storage room but the feeling of teetering on the brink hadn't left me. I couldn't even explain why. I just wanted to. It felt like the only way of dealing with everything that was bottled up inside of me,

"Will you tell Lola that I hit her head on something at work?" I asked Aaron, swallowing the lump in my throat and attempting to stand without letting out a low growl of pain. I hated lying to Lola, Lexi and Jack but I didn't think I'd be able to articulate what happened at the moment and especially not to a child. "And that means no jumping on me for a while." 

"Of course." I carefully made my way over to him, gritting my teeth at the pain shooting through my torso. His face was solemn, almost blank, if it wasn't for the tightness of his jaw. We started to drift down the corridor, as though he could sense my desire to speak out of earshot of the others. Not that I had much to say, or much I felt I could say right at this moment.

"Don't you have to get going?" I asked quietly, Lola still lingering in my mind. I didn't want to leave her for too long.

"Yes, but - "

"Go." I insisted, reading the slightly nervous look in his eyes. He didn't want to leave me. I was now a burden for him. I didn't want to be. I just wanted to love him like I always had done. "You'll be back really soon and then we can cuddle on the sofa and you'll have to watch whatever cheesy movie I want."

I forced myself to meet his gaze, his eyes tired and rimmed with red. How had I not seen it before? Had he been crying? Or was it from anger? 

I was hardly one to judge. My face was still wet with dried tears that would take more than my brittle, bloody fingers to scrape away.

"Thank you. For everything. I mean - " My voice broke and I swallowed the rest of my words as a tear rolled down my face. I brushed it away, not wanting to think too deeply about the glassy look in Aaron's eyes. 

I didn't know what to say other than that. We both knew what could have happened. And then where would we be.

"I love you." I wanted to cry even more at that. It wasn't just the completely open and vulnerable look in his eyes but the rawness of his voice. His hands were hanging by his sides, his arms tense, and I could easily reach across and intertwine our fingers. I could reach up and cup his face, kiss him, run my hands through my hair.

I would have done if Evan and Becky weren't standing a few steps away. He looked so warm and gentle that it was hard to resist.

At least that was what I told myself.

Would my ribs be up to anything more strenuous than kissing? There was only one way to find out.

Would Aaron shut me down and say I needed to rest?

Would I be able to touch him without thinking of another pair of hands mauling over my skin like claws.

There was only one way to find out.


	40. Epilogus

Thank you so much to everyone who read, reviewed and liked this story - it means so much to know that people appreciate the time and effort that I put into creating these worlds. Unfortunately, I am completely snowed under with school exams at the moment and I have no idea when, or if, this series will be able to continue. But, I want to thank everyone again who has taken the time to come on this journey with me.  
  
If you want to check out more of my work, I've got a whole host of other stories that you can check out:  
[What The World Needs Now Is Love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9145981/chapters/20778751)  /[Part 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11855304/chapters/26766075) - Based in the Criminal Minds universe following my OC Lizzy whose seemingly normal and perfect world is cracked right open by a serial killer, the BAU and SSA Aaron Hotchner  
[Kindly Calm Me Down](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10096139/chapters/22488554)  - Based in the Marvel world and following my OC Regan in the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War where every loyalty is tested and everything is put on the line, for love and her life, for a chance with a super soldier  
[Breathe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13437687/chapters/30797487)  - Based in the Now You See Me world and following my OC Margot and her escapades with a troop of magicians, a drug lord and the shady past that threatens to overturn the entire life she's built.  
[The Rose Hallows](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14712116/chapters/34000445) \- Based in Narnia and following my OC Georgie in the aftermath of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader with her deep-rooted, conflicted feelings over a certain King, her own troubles as the ruler of a small kingdom and the arrival of a new, mysterious host who turns her entire world upside down.  
  
Thank you so much for venturing on this journey with me and I hope you stick with me to see what I have coming in the future!


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